11 Essential Building Blocks For Crafting Copy That Sells

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Today's episode, we get to listen to Bill Glazer himself. Now, Bill Glazer was a partner with Dan Kennedy once upon a time in GKIC, which was Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle. And Bill Glazer is going to be sharing with us over the next little while the keys to building good copy. Now, a lot of times you're writing copy, you don't know it. Anything that goes out from your company to a customer is copy. Even the simplest of things from a thank you note to a newsletter to a memo. Bill Glazer is going to share how you make sure that you craft every single piece of content so that way it follows all the principles that Dan Kennedy teaches in copywriting, following the 11 building blocks that you have to follow when you're crafting copy that sells.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws. Laws that you live by.

Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like.

Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless. His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy. What I want to talk about is the most important skill to master regardless of the business that you're in. And this is important. So at the InfoSummit, Dan and I are going to be doing 3 nights on advanced copywriting for the information marketing business. Why am I telling you this is because that's not— this is not only about the information marketing business, what we're doing here today. I don't care if you're in the funeral business. I don't care what other businesses do I have. In the sales business, how to teach people to sell. I don't even care, like Susan Kyes, right? Susan Kyes' case is she said before, you know, I found out that I wasn't good at speaking. Well, see, this applies to even the speaking because now figuring out how to craft this presentation to feel like the prospect is talking to me, it applies to that business. So it could be in my, for my dental practice over here. Is how do I talk to my patients. I don't care what business you're in, all this stuff applies. So this is the ability to write copy that sells. So again, I'm not talking, I mean, I'm very overt about this. This is not about how to write copy. This is not how to write to be an author to write a book copy. This is not about how to write copy where you are writing for a newspaper as an editor or for a magazine as an editor. That's a different kind of copy. I got one mission on my copy and one mission only, which is get people to respond to what I am asking them to respond to. So I call it writing copy that sells. And as I always put up here, it's the one thing that I will tell you that, that made all the difference in the world with me. For example, let me just— for those of you that don't know this part of my story, although most of you know a good amount of my story, what you know is, is that my former life was as a menswear retailer, right? So I had two menswear stores in Baltimore, Maryland, one in downtown Baltimore and the other one in a suburb called Owings Mills, which is a rather high-end suburb in Baltimore. And so for the first 20, 23 years, first 20 years I was there, I worked with my father every day. And then, but for the first 23 years, the first 20 of those 23, I worked with my father every day. First 23 years, we had a successful menswear business that was built on two principles of our success. Now, we weren't ultra successful, but we were successful. And we had two principles of our success. The first principle of our success was, was built on hard work. My father and I worked 6, oftentimes 7 days a week at certain times of year. We would often work, you know, early in the morning. We'd get there, the store would open at 9, so we would get there at 8 or 8:30 in the morning to sort of get ready for the day. And a lot of times we'd work till 9, 10 o'clock at night depending on what the situation was. So a normal week for me in those first 20-some years was more like 70 hours was a low amount of hours for me, but I would work 80 and 90 hours a week a lot. So we really built it on Hard work. Anybody, any of you in the room here, I mean, I just admitted to you what I, you know, I did for 23 years. Anybody here now involved in this hard work process? Cool, that's good. Boy, I feel better now because most people won't admit to that, you know. Good for you. Now we had a second, I had a second principle that I identified that was also due to our success. And my second principle that was due to my success was We did hard work. It was the same damn principles, but it just sounded like better if I had two of them. But the truth of the matter is it was the same principle. We worked hard. I mean, and we weren't, you know, we weren't necessarily any smarter than our competition, and we certainly didn't have any brands that our competition couldn't get. We really built it on hard work, and then it wasn't until 1995 that I went to the Success Seminar and Dan Kennedy was the last speaker and I heard Dan speak. Well, first from Dan I learned marketing strategies I never heard before, but then as I really got totally entrenched with Dan because then I just bought everything that he was offering, I learned about this thing called copywriting. And when I started learning how to write copy, that was really the key, was learning this one skill that could really take my business to another level. Because it allowed me, and I'll show you in a second, it allowed me to do something which I never could do before. It allowed me to leverage myself. And what happened was, is we had Herculean growth, but as important, or maybe more importantly, it eventually took us, our two menswear stores became one of the top 10 menswear stores in the United States, or actually in North America, because it really was after I learned this skill, which is how to write copy that sells. And I want to make sure you understand that When I talk about writing copy that sells, because most people, when Bill Glazer talks about writing copy that sells, this is what the first image that comes over their mind is, is like create one of these things that get like an unbelievable response. So that's sort of like Michael's approach was. How did this thing do? Well, it's not just this thing, but it's in any kind of format. So sales letters, websites, emails, postcards, memos, just memos, intercompany memos. Believe me, when you're doing an intercompany memo, that's copy that sells. Faxes that you send out, signs. How many of you here have brick-and-mortar businesses? Keep your hands up if you not only have brick-and-mortar businesses but you have businesses where customers come to you. Come to your company, okay? Well, here's a little trick for you. In the retail world, over 30% of all sales are created by signs. So looking at how to craft a sign. I have a client of mine I don't know if I'm going to show you any of their stuff today or not, but I have a client of mine who's a bank. We figured out that our best opportunity in order to offer loans to our customers of the bank was when they were waiting in line, waiting for their turn to get to the teller. There was, you know, they had these ropes and stanchions up. You've seen it all. And you wait in line, wait. So we put up signs there in the bank in order to tell them about the loans that are available to them. That has on a low month that has doubled the amount of loans that we're now making in the bank compared to what we used to do in the past. That's just signage. So looking at ways that you can create signage. Those of you that come to our events, I mean, I'm an open book by the way. Those of you that come to our events, one of our best salespeople at our events, one of our very best sales at our events is the back table. I love the back table sales. If you see our back table sales, what do we got on top of it? We got signs. We're using our signs to sell products for us, which is a strategy very few people who put on live events kind of figure it out, by the way. Signs. Learning how to put words on paper in order for signs, for newsletters. We're going to be talking more about newsletters later. By the way, how many of you send out a monthly newsletter? I shouldn't have brought him in. I don't need to bring him in. Newsletters, newspaper ads, magazines, radio scripts. Radio scripts, you know, is putting words on paper that gets translated into audio. TV scripts, brochures. This is— the next two are really important. Is learning how to write copy that sells also significantly helps you with how you communicate with people that you work with. Because think about it, whether you're employing people Or you're working with people. So Mike, you work with your family, right? Your father is still there? My father's still there. Okay, so your father's still there. I can identify with that, right? Well, every time that I was communicating with my father, I was selling him something. I mean, he didn't realize it, but I was figuring out how I could get him to do what it is that I wanted him to do. So how you communicate with people that you work with This skill of learning how to put words on paper that get people to take the action you want is significant. And also, not only people that you work with, but also the people that you do business with. I was, I had lunch with Rob Berkley, and I was telling him my strategy today during lunch, how I used to get my vendors who sold me in my menswear stores to do things for me that were extraordinary. They wouldn't do it for anybody else. Well, it was all about how I would be able to communicate with them in order to get them to do things for me that I wanted them to do. So it's not only about putting words on paper, but it's also about how you formulate your communication with people that you work with and people that you do business with in order to get the type of action that you want them to take, which in this particular case is to buy the proposition that you're sending to them. Okay. So why is creating copy that sells the most important skill that you can and should possess? By the way, we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of this, so, but I need to go over this stuff. Number 1, it affects how you think about your customers. The second thing is it affects how you communicate with people as a whole, and we talked about that before. So it's the people that you work with, the people that you are a customer of. It could be with your banker, your insurance agent, anybody at all that you're doing business with or that you come in contact with. The truth of the matter is, and I would never admit this to Karen, but it affects how how you actually communicate with your spouse because, you know, think about it, you want your spouse to do the stuff that you want them to do. So it affects totally how you communicate with people. The third point is really important. I mentioned that before. It gives you the highest leverage of them all because I told you for the first 23 years my two attributes was hard work and hard work. And what I really meant by that is it was all one-on-one selling. A customer would walk in the front door and we would sell them one-on-one. And then after we would sell them one-on-one, we would cross our fingers and hope that the next time that they come to buy menswear again, they would think of us. Whereas by learning how to put words on paper in any kind of format, I can now use mass media to go out and get these customers to come into my store, which was the real reason why we had the big skyrocket in our sales and also in our profit because we had more people coming to us. And as importantly, no, more importantly, not only could we use mass media to get people to come to us, but they were more predisposed to buy because we could use our message to deliver our exact message to them that when they walked in the door, they weren't just looking, they were there because our message got them to take the action we wanted them to take. And please, I'm going to say this one more time only because I'm looking around the room and I'm fearful of this. Do not think that what I'm sharing with you right now applies only to menswear stores. Okay? When I was listening to all your 33-second, 45-second presentations today, it was— it applies to every one of your businesses that you have out there. And I will tell you that if more of you would focus in on what I am about to share with you today and tomorrow, it's going to make your job of getting— growing your businesses infinitely easier as it did for my core retail business. I love this quote, "The answer to every problem in life is a really good sales letter." And actually it's by Gary Halbert. And so what I would really do is I would take it to the next level and I would say that the answer to every problem in life is a really good sales message. So, I mean, because again, I don't want you to think this is just sales letters. This is any kind of sales message in any format. Okay. Now one last thing I want to talk to you about before we move into this whole notion of the actual stuff you got to do to make this happen. So this is the last sort of preparatory remarks, is stop being an advertising victim because I see it too often. First of all, it's real easy to sell advertising to people because it appeals to their ego. People love to see either the name of their business or their name in print in any kind of format. So in the case that people are selling you advertising, and I don't care what format it is, either online or offline, they're selling you advertising where it appeals to your ego. So like for example, if it's online, you got somebody who comes along and he wants to sell you a done-for-you website, create your website for you, okay? What is typically the big number one thing they put on the top of the website?

Company name.

Stick it up there. Okay? Now, to me, I might think in terms of putting my headline up there because that's going to be the thing that's going to get them to bring them in. Okay? So, but they'll sell it to you based on company name and the reason why they sell it to you based on company name is because they know that you like seeing your name up there on the top of your website. So it's real easy to sell advertising because it appeals to your ego. And you can't allow that to happen. The second thing is writing is an area where everyone thinks they're an expert. So what happens is this, and think about it. You write something, right? And what do you do when you write something? A sales message. You tend to give it to somebody you work with or you give it to somebody that you love and you're married to or your kids. Or you give it to somebody to show to and then they give you their input. So if it's a long sales letter, their normal reaction is, "Who's going to read all this crap? Nobody's going to read all this crap." And it doesn't matter what the hell it is. So if it's got Suzanne Somers up top here, somebody's going to say to you, "Oh, that's going to offend certain women who read this thing. They're going to be— they're not going to like the fact that you put a pretty blonde up there." They're going to give you all kinds of reasons why what you did is not right. So everybody thinks that they are an expert, but the truth of the matter is that you really— the only people you want to listen to are the people that really understand how to write copy. And you've got to understand, I'm telling you, I am going to tell you that you've got to learn how to write copy. I will also tell you that you don't have to write your own copy. So I just contradicted myself, right? But I didn't contradict myself. I'm not going to tell you you got to write your own copy, but I'm telling you if you want to be really, take your business to a certain, really the highest level, you got to understand what good copy is. So if you want to delegate to somebody, delegate to somebody. It makes professional copywriters like me wealthy to do that. But I also would tell you is that the clients that I work with who understand what good copy is, which none of them are, but the clients I work with who understand— I would love to have a client who understands good copy, to be honest with you. I don't really have one now that I think of it. But if the clients that I work with, if they understand copy, well, it makes both of our jobs much easier because now they are giving me information based on how to write copy that's very valuable, and I'm dealing with somebody who I don't have to retrain of why I'm doing what I'm doing. You should see my, you should be a fly on the wall in some of my one-on-one consulting days that I do with certain clients of mine. It's like, I mean, half the time I gotta like prove to them, I just gotta spend half of my time explaining to them why they're idiots. When I sit there and go through all this, this why am I doing what I'm doing. And then the last thing is, which gets to the point I just made, is everybody wants to delegate their marketing advertising. So if you go to most organizations, is that they all want to find a marketing director. I thought I offended you. They want to find a marketing director, you know. I mean, I have this a lot with— I mean, in my VIP coaching group right now, this past— this last year, 3 people on our one-on-one coaching calls, this was the big topic of the call, is, "Bill, I can't get all this stuff done." How do I find somebody who can be my marketing director to do all this stuff for me? Now, I'm not going to tell you not to use advertising agencies, and I'm not going to tell you not to use marketing directors, but I am going to tell you is you got to understand how to write copy. Even if you get somebody else, if you delegate to somebody else, this is not something that you just hand off to somebody and say, here, take this and then go do it. This is something that requires your involvement Throughout the entire process forever. Okay, so how can anyone create copy that sells, even you? So here's, here's how you— how this is done. So I first started studying Dan's stuff, and I am the first to admit, there's no question about it, that Dan's copywriting strategies and input made the greatest impact on me of anybody else's that I've ever studied. But I also go a little further and tell you that I didn't stop there. So the next thing I did was I start— I got— became like totally voracious about the whole thing and I started studying everybody. I went back to the old classics, you know, people like Caples and I studied all the old Victor Schwab, everybody's stuff. I read every book there was out there. I started attending all kinds of seminars that I could attend on copywriting, including Dan's. And I studied all the other greats, Halbert certainly. I studied John Carlton's stuff, which is, John is very good in what he does. A lot of areas he's got things figured out that nobody else has figured out. I studied everything I could. And then I started writing copy and I got extraordinarily good at it. I don't mean to sound egotistical, but I got extraordinarily good at it, you know, because The results I was getting were really spectacular. And, but what I found out was that the process that I went through to sort of learn this stuff was a long grind out process. I mean, it took me a good 6 years before I got really at the top of my game and then the next 2 years I started polishing it, you know. And what I found out when I went back, and this is actually goes back to the Creating Copy That Sells course. So when I had to deliver that full day seminar, this is a Superconference, I think 2 years ago, maybe 3 now, but 2 or 3 years ago, I went back and looked over all my stuff and I spent 6 months of all my free time for 6 months. I went back and looked at everything I learned and I figured out that people, the reason why a lot of people don't get good at writing copy was because it's too tough, tough of a task to do what I did that took me 8 years to sort of get to the point of where I could be. So I went back and I figured out how can I systematize the process so that other people could just sort of follow a system because people really like systems. I learned that from my retail marketing system is you got to put systems in place for people. So I put through these 11 building blocks. The first, step number 1 is the 11 building blocks. And these are things that all your copy must have when you write copy. So the very first one is a headline. Gotta have a headline on top of all your copy to sort of get the reader's attention, and we're going to be talking about this a little bit later, get their attention in order to bring them into your copy. The second thing they gotta have is they gotta have a subhead. It's almost a waste today to write a headline without a subhead because a subhead allows you to sort of like give an extra pow to your copy. So you've got a headline, you might as well at least have a subhead that gives another big push to what it is you're talking about in your headline. And the other thing that subheads do is you're able to put subheads throughout all your copy so it gives you something which we call double readership path, which allows you to keep people engaged as they're reading your copy. The third is credibility. So every piece of your copy needs to have credibility. Credibility, and this is like a biggie. And the two most common ways— well, let's try a different approach. What are the two most common ways to add credibility to your copy? The first one is darn easy. Yes, sir? Testimonials is number one. Okay. And what are the two best types of testimonials? Yes, sir. Don't scream it out. I'm going to have somebody raise their hand and I'll call on them, okay? Okay. Results testimonial. Okay. So one of the best two ways is a results testimonial where the testimonial gives a specific result. So I got from Advantage Media— Advantage Media wrote my book for me and I was able, because of that, I was able to get 13 new speaking jobs that I would have never gotten before. That's a result-driven testimonial. So one of them is results. What's the second best way to use testimony? Yes, Mr. Killingbeck? Objection. Right. To overcome an objection. Overcome an objection. So a great testimonial that would overcome an objection is, "I've been wanting to write a book for 2 years, but I just knew I couldn't get it done. And so finally when I found Advantage Media and they were able to take me through their talk, their book program where I could just spend 6 hours and pow, I had my own book. That was for me. So that overcomes an objection of it's so hard to get a book written. So the 2 best types of testimonials to use is results-driven and overcoming objection. Now credibility. Let's go back to credibility. I told you there's 2 types of best credibility. One of them is testimonial. What is the other best type of credibility you could put in all your advertising marketing? What? Nope, not a story. Nope, not a guarantee. Yes? Not endorsement. Accomplishments. What you've accomplished. I've won, you know, I use, you'll probably see me tell a lot, I won the Rack Award in 2002, the highest award you can win in retail advertising. I've written 21 sales letters, each generated over $1 million or more in sales. I've been featured in all the top direct marketing magazines as examples of great marketing. Those are accomplishments. Those are the two best types of credibility is testimonials, what other people say about you is more believable than what you say about yourself, and the other thing is what you've accomplished. And you can use it so many different ways of what you've accomplished. So, like for example, Michael, in your case, how many, how many, How many distributors do you now have? About 3,000. 3,000 distributors. Well, see, that's impressive. I got 3,000 people selling my tasers out there. We're tasering North America right now. So, see, that's an impressive statistic, okay? The gentleman in the back, Clay, is that your name? Ed Clay. Ed Clay, right? Yeah. So, you know, talking about sort of, you know, What some of your students have accomplished, you know, in your karate school. Talking about all these accomplishments is a terrific way in order to gain credibility for what you do. Of the two, testimonials are stronger. What people say about you is much more believable than what you say about yourself. So of the two, that is— but you want to be doing both if you can. Number 4, Susan, is guarantees. This is a building block. So here's the deal about guarantees. The deal about guarantees is this: is you want to always sell using guarantees. Now, some of you are going to be saying to yourselves right now that I can't guarantee what I sell. It's impossible for me to guarantee what I sell. And I'm telling you that everybody— I've never met anybody yet who can't guarantee what they sell. And I'm gonna explain to you in just a second, those of you who say you can't guarantee what you sell, how you can really guarantee what you sell. But why you want to always use guarantees in all your— everything that you do in terms of writing copy is because, number one, by adding a guarantee in your copy, it makes the job of the sale infinitely easier. So you will sell much, much more by being able to add a guarantee. The second reason is because it's the right thing to do. It's really the right thing to do is to guarantee everything that you sell. So, you know, if you look, go to our web store, we have a guarantee on everything that we sell. If you come to one of our events, we even put guarantees in the sales copy that if you're not happy with what, you know, you experience while you're at the event, we'll give you back your money. Everything that we sell, we add guarantees. One is because it's the right thing to do, and I'm telling you, if you can't guarantee what you sell, find something else to sell. And the second thing is it makes the job of the sale so much easier. So like, getting back to my menswear stores— and I hate to keep using those examples only because I'm afraid that some of you are going to think it only applies to menswear— but you go to my menswear stores where we had people that would come in and they would buy apparel, and if it was for a gift, if a woman was coming in buying for her husband, If we didn't tell her that, you know, if you weren't totally satisfied, you could return and get all your money back, we wouldn't have sold nearly as much as we sold, adding that guarantee. So now let's talk about this whole issue about being able to guarantee what you sell. I had a guy, this is a true story, in Nashville, a guy walks up to me, 'cause I probably mentioned guarantees when I was talking during the outrageous advertising, that's my guess, and he walks up to me and he says, "Bill," he says, "I can't guarantee what I sell." So I said, well, what do you sell? He says, we sell million-and-a-half-dollar condominiums. You might have actually heard the guy there because he actually got up at some point and spoke about something else. But I saw million-and-a-half-dollar condominiums. How can I guarantee that if we build it for people, we custom build them in this high-rise, and how can I guarantee that if we build it for them and they put down a deposit, we build it exactly for them, that we'll give them back their money if they're not happy. And I said, okay, don't do that guarantee, but let me ask you a question. When is the condominiums gonna be done? Says they're gonna be done in September. So I said, can you guarantee the fact that if they're gonna be done in September, that if they're not done by December, that you'll give them a 10% reduction? So you're guaranteeing, I'll get them done for you, give me a 3-month leeway, if not, I'll give you 10% off? He said, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. I said, let me ask you another question. Do you guarantee all the appliances in the condominium? And he says, listen, they all come with a standard 1-year parts and labor guarantee. So I said, well, make a big deal of that. We'll give you a 1-year parts and labor guarantee on everything you have. I said, let me ask you another question. If it breaks, something's wrong with it, and they got to call you up, how do you guys respond? He says, we have our own people on staff You know, the kind of maintenance people that they'll come up same day. Oh, I said, that's cool. Can you guarantee the fact that Monday through Friday that if you have any kind of a problem with anything in your apartment that we'll come up same day? He says, yeah, we do that anyway. It's a regular course of business. I said, well, we sat there and we talked, okay, and I asked him some questions. We came up with 15 items that this guy could guarantee on his million-and-a-half-dollar condominium. Now, think about what I just did there. If you're running sales copy and you come up with your 15-point guarantee to sell a $1.5 million condominium, isn't that much stronger, much more compelling? You don't have to give him back his money, but you can give him all these other guarantees. And I have never met a business yet that can't come up with these guarantees. And I did that just in like a 20-minute conversation with the guy, which was very painful for me, but it was very helpful to him to have this conversation. But I did that in this conversation. I'm telling you that every one of your businesses that's out there, you can guarantee, you can figure out things that you can guarantee to that person. And in many cases, it's services that you are already providing to them. So there's things that, normal ways that you already do business with them, but now you kind of like, it's just your way of doing business, but the truth of the matter is, is If it's just your way of doing business but you don't make a big deal out of it, shame on you. Because you should be making a big deal out of the way that you do business. So guarantee everything that you sell. Number 5, I think it's 5, cosmetics. Cosmetics is one of the 11 building blocks. And this sort of moves back to number 2, subheads. Subheads is one way, not the only way, of offering cosmetics. There's so many ways. Offerings, cosmetics. Bolding, underlining, different font size, highlighting, different color of font. I mean, just those are just a few items that you can be putting on that list of cosmetics. The— how— when's the last time anybody here was excited about reading like one of these books that these lawyers read with all the law inside, with a little like 8-point font in there. You, Gary, you enjoy reading. Maybe a couple of our lawyers here enjoy reading that stuff. Now, I mean, the same thing with doctors. You can see all these doctors' journals that they get. Who was the one that wanted to meet somebody who could write for them for medical stuff? You know what I mean? That would be great. I mean, like, give them a pillow, you know, when you get that. So, you know, you got to make this stuff cosmetically interesting to them to Make sure that they want to read it, and I'm going to show you a little bit later on about something called double readership path. The next is 6, is an offer. You think you should have this in everything you do? You think? Absolutely you should have this in everything you do. So you want to always have an offer in everything you do. Now, and I don't have time to get into it today, and I do teach it in the copywriting course, all you that have the course you know this, There's ways to make offers where you don't discount. So discount is one way to make an offer, but there's lots of ways to create offers other than discounting. So don't think that every time I do something, I got a discount. Is like the doc over there, he does $99 gunk, what's that called? Botox. And gave them a $1 peel. By the way, Doc, I would not advertise to them it only cost you a buck. Okay, good, good, good. All right, right. I would talk about the fact that this peel is made with the finest 14-karat gold stuff, and, uh, but I wouldn't tell them. I mean, that's just for like this room here only. So there's— so, so everything has to have an offer, but an offer is no good at all no good at all if it doesn't have a deadline. So you can have all the offers in the world you want. So in the doc's case, if he's got his $99 Botox peel offer, okay, but they know that they can come in today, tomorrow, next year, or next decade to get that, that doesn't do any good for him. So there's got to be a deadline to it. Now, there's two of the most common types of deadlines. What are they? Well, let's— hold up your hand. We're going to have to have a system. So let's go with John Keel first, then we'll get you, okay? Date. Date. So one of the most common types of deadlines is deadline by date. So everybody who responds before July 13th gets my special $99 unlimited monthly Botox and also my $1 crappy peel. So that's my— okay. Okay, you, sir. What's— you have an— was that your answer? Date? That was one of them. What was the other one? Limited quantity. Limited quantity. That's the two most common types of ways to do a deadline. Now, there's other ways to do deadlines as well, but those are the two most common, is by date and by quantity. So you always want to have some kind of a deadline because here's the story, okay? The story is I have an admission to make to you. I am a procrastinator. And guess what else? You are procrastinators. And the reason why is because we're all procrastinators. I mean, I could tell you right now, I just actually had to clean my desk at home because yesterday we had my family members come over for Father's Day. We had a Father's Day, you know, cookout, you know. So I had to clean off my desk. And so I only do it— the only time I ever clean off my desk at home is when somebody comes over. So the only thing good about my family coming over is it makes me clean up my desk. Okay, I mean, every— anybody else can relate with me on that thing, right? You're right, absolutely. So this ain't nothing special about me. So anyhow, so as I'm cleaning off my desk, what do I come across? All the stuff that I wanted to take advantage of was sitting there buried underneath other papers that I just never took advantage of because there was no reason for me to have to take advantage of it right away. So, everything has to have a deadline to get the person to respond and act right away. By the way, the Bill Glazer rule on deadlines, and this is not unilateral, but I never like to give deadlines more than 2 weeks. I break that rule, but I never like to give it more than 2 weeks. Okay. Number 8, the story. So somebody called out before the story. So one of the building blocks is the story, and I'm telling you that adding a story to your marketing will substantially increase your results. Now, and I also tell you, every one of you has a story. I'm not kidding. So Scott, Scott, come on up here for a second. Scott Manning. Scott knows I— because he's real quiet and reserved, so he knows I like that. So go get one of those mics. Bill, can we get a mic? Okay. All right, so let's— is that on? Okay, Mike— Scott, not Mike. Scott talking. No, you can stay right there. What do you do?

I have an IBA business. In Indianapolis and coaching consulting.

Geez, Scott, that's really interesting. How did you get into that?

So about 6 years ago— I've had a martial arts school ever since about 12 years ago. And about 6 years ago, I ran into a consultant named Stephen Oliver. Who is a Dan Kennedy member. He's been with you guys for many years. Went to Denver to a mastermind meeting there. He started talking about all the secret strategies and marketing and everything, but every other sentence was Dan Kennedy, Dan Kennedy, Dan Kennedy. So I thought, this is interesting. I went to the bookstore while I was in Denver, never heard of Dan Kennedy before, bought all the books, read them on the airplane on the way back to Indianapolis. And ever since then have been involved with Glazer Kennedy. I was finishing my MBA about 3 years ago. At the same time, I was doing local copywriting consulting for some businesses and wanted to expand on that. I didn't want to deal with consumers, I wanted to deal with businesses. And then I came to the Super Conference, knew that the IBA opportunity was going to be there, and took advantage of it.

Right. So is that Scott's story? Huh? Well, actually, it's a pretty good story. See, now I happen to know a lot more about Scott because he's one of our original IBAs and I've talked to him a lot. And there's some things I know about him that I would now ask him a question to get even more of his story out on about like something along the lines of, you don't have to answer this, but, you know, Scott, do you still have your martial arts school, which you don't, I don't think, anymore, right? You sold that, right?

Yeah, I do have one. We had about, we had 6 at one time and downsized one.

So there's a whole story how he went from 6 to 1. You see, so you see how I'm building on the story? But you see how this whole story thing that he's, by putting that in paper makes what he's saying much, much more interesting than just saying that I'm the local independent business advisor and come on out to my chapter meeting. So he has a story of how Glaser Kennedy, or how Dan Kennedy, has transformed his life into becoming a very, very smart, astute local marketer. He's got a whole— and that whole story that he gave really builds up on it, builds that, is much more interesting. Thanks, Scott. You can sit down now. Thank you. So my point is that every one of you, inside of you, has a story. And this is exactly what I do with my clients. Clients when I first work with them, I say to them these questions: What do you do? And I'd be quiet. And then I say, gee, that's interesting. How did you get into that? And then I'm quiet. And then the stuff just starts rolling out, okay, the same way it did with Scott here. And then sometimes I start asking a couple more follow-up questions if I hear something that I want to hear more of the story. So I'm telling you, in your particular case, every one of you wants to create your own story. Because every one of you, I can tell you, I mean, how you're in the businesses that you're in right now, there's a story behind it. And you want to use those stories in all of your marketing. So it is a building block of creating copy. The next is bullets. Now bullets tie into number 5 a lot. Which is cosmetics. Actually, I want to just go back to the story for a second and then I want to get to bullets. I forgot to make an important point about the story. Why stories are just so powerful. It's because that's how we grew up, by hearing stories. When we were little children, what did our parents do? They told us a story. Mommy tell me a story, Daddy tell me a story, Grandpa tell me a story. We grew up by hearing stories. What is the best— what is the number one book ever written? What is the Bible? It's a long story. See, that's how we grew up, is hearing. So we've been accustomed to listening to stories. So you want to always use stories in all of your marketing, all of your, your marketing pieces. Bullets. So bullets tie into cosmetics, number 5. And with that, it's a way to make your copy more interesting. So the best way to create bullets are, is to create all of the features of what it is that you're offering and then what are the benefits of those features. So each bullet would be a feature delivers a benefit. Feature delivers a benefit. Feature delivers a benefit. Why are bullets so powerful? The reason why they're so powerful is because we've trained people when they look at sales copy, whether it's online sales copy, print sales copy, we've trained them that there's goodies in the bullets. So people go to bullets because they know that there's a lot of good stuff there. So that's why they are a building block in, in their copy. Do you have to use bullets? You really don't have to use bullets, but I tend to use them a lot in my— when I wrote the sales letter for, which is one of the 19 sales letters that I write, it's actually 21 now, but I still have 19 in my sales letter. But when I had— one of the 21 sales letters that I wrote that generated over $1 million in sales, one of those is the sales letter that I wrote for my Creating Copy That Sells course. And then there, there's 35 bullets that are in there. Now, they're not all in one contiguous listing. I broke them up a little bit. But there's 35 bullets in there of things that they will get in the course. And people will read bullets. Those are things that people really pay a lot of attention to. Number 10 is the PS. So the PS is after you sign your name basically. At the bottom of your sales story, and again that's using a sales letter. A PS is the way to go back, the best way to say it is it's a way to go back and to restate all the goodies. So what would the PS be in a radio, 60-second radio script? It's the last thing you say on the 60 seconds. It's going back and restating the big benefit. What's the headline on a 60-second radio script? First thing you hear is that's the headline. See, this stuff, don't think it's only a sales letter. This stuff applies everywhere. That when you're using all kinds of different media, this stuff applies. So just figure out how can I translate it from one media to the next. So that's the PS. And the last thing is number 11. Is the close. So this is like the analogy that I like to give is like in football. See, like I, in Baltimore we got the Ravens, okay, and they are famous for not being able to close. They can get the ball down to the red zone, but they can't score. So they, they don't know how to get it over the goal line in order to score. So it's the same thing that people do. It's one of the biggest mistakes that I see a lot of people doing in their marketing is they tell— they get people all interested in what they got, but then they don't tell them exactly how to take action in getting them to do the thing that you want them to do. So that's the close. So you've got to make sure that you tell people precisely in all your marketing pieces exactly the action that I want you to take. And in some cases, by the way, You can give them multiple ways to respond. So it doesn't mean that it's only one action. It doesn't just mean that I got to pick up the phone and call you. By the way, that oftentimes is one of the worst ways to make people respond. But it doesn't mean I only have to pick up the phone and call you. It doesn't mean that I only can send you an email, which is another one of the only, one of the worst ways to get people to respond if that's your only way is to send an email.. But usually if you give people multiple ways to respond, so you go to a website, you can call me, you can listen to a prerecorded message, you can fax me, if you give them multiple ways to respond, normally that will increase your response. Now it doesn't always increase your response, and I've seen some cases where it's actually suppressed response, but a big general overall comment about it is usually multiple ways to respond are better ways to better ways to get them response.

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