Getting Inside The Head Of Your Customers

Have you ever had a hard time identifying your customer? Everyone tells us that we need to go deep into the demographics and we need to understand them in more depth. But often when you're writing copy, especially direct response copy, or you're just trying to get to the nitty-gritty of who your customer is, there should be more strategies in place to help flesh out who this person is that you're actually marketing towards. So that way the one piece of marketing that's created is the one piece and hopefully only piece they need to convert. That is the goal of direct response marketing. But how do we actually learn who they are? Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In this episode, we get to listen as Bill Glazer goes deep into the head of our customers. He's going to talk about several different strategies that he uses in order to help write copy better. Now at the end, he's going to talk about different boosters that you're going to be able to use for your copy. And yes, demographics will be a topic, But there are several exercises that come before that even should take place. What are those and how does this work? Let's go ahead and jump into getting inside the head of your customers with Bill Glazer.

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. Getting inside the head of the customer. So yesterday I spent some time with you yesterday going over sort of basic concepts of copywriting. Okay? And today I want to really take it to the next level where we use our skills that we have or need to develop in writing copy, but get to a point where we can get inside the head of the customer. And this is, I'm going to tell you, this is going to be a process today and it's going to require a fair amount of exercises that we do today of actual stuff that you do in order to figure this thing out. I will also tell you that what I'm going to be sharing with you today and teaching you today is probably the most valuable thing that you can ever do for your business if you're trying to communicate and sell to people. This is going to be a very, very valuable exercise. Process that we're going to go through today, and do not take this lightly. This is a pretty serious thing. It's probably going to be the most serious thing that I'm going to be doing with you in Peak Performers for this entire year. So make sure again that you take it very seriously. So there's a bunch of exercises. The first exercise is mistakes my prospects make. So what I want you to do is I want you to First, individually, not as a group. So this is, this is a— to begin with, this is an individual, uh, project. You're looking at who are my prospects, who are the people that I want to sell, not the people that I am selling, but the people that I want to sell. Who are my prospects and what are the mistakes that they're making in regard to the product and/or services that I am providing to them, what are the mistakes that they're currently making? And you want this list to be as long as you possibly can make it. And after you finalize and get to the end of your list, then I want you to then say, okay, now that I got to the end of my list, let me think of what are the other things the mistakes are making. So you want this to be as long as you can possibly make it. So we're going to be quiet. This is heavy thinking. You're going to have to really push your brains, but what are the mistakes that they're making? Okay? Okay. All right. So now, so now I want you— now the next part of this, and this next one is an easier exercise, but you got more difficult ones ahead of you. So this next one's an easier exercise. Is you got your list of mistakes, and by the way, a couple things. First of all, Whoever doesn't have 67, you now have a— that's the bar. That's what you aspire to develop. And the truth of the matter is that if I gave you guys unlimited time and you really communicate— I let you, everybody move around and communicate with each other and all, you could come up with a list of 100 of them easily as far as mistakes that your prospects are making. And I hope you see already a glimpse in that. I'll connect the dots for you a little bit later on today, but you see a glimpse into how now knowing these mistakes can make a big difference in how you communicate with your prospects because now when the prospect says, "Gee, I'm dealing with somebody that identifies and feels my pain and points out my pain to me that, that, and offers their product or service as a solution. Gee, I'm now dealing with the kind of person that understands me." And we're going to get to that a little bit later on. But here's the next part of this exercise that you'll find interesting is there's mistakes And then there's mistakes. So what do I mean by that? Well, there's mistakes that people are making that they know that they are making. There's mistakes that people are making that they don't realize they're making. There's mistakes that people are making that they don't realize are mistakes. They think they're the right thing to do. So what I want you to do now is I want you— the next piece of this, and this is a lot quicker, so don't be so worried about this is what to do with your list of prospect mistakes. Mark off the ones that— I want you to put a 1 and a 2 next to the ones that apply. Some of these won't apply. Number 1 is mistakes that they don't know that they're making. Don't start yet because I want to give you the 2 things and you'll go and do them all. Mistakes that they're making but they don't know that they're making. And then put a 1 next to those. And a 2 next to mistakes that they think they should be doing but shouldn't be doing. There's going to be things on your list that are not going to have a 1 or a 2. So only certain things are going to have a 1 or a 2. The number 1 I think is easy for all of you. It's mistakes that they don't know that they're making. So mistakes that they're making, they don't even realize they're making them. The second one is mistakes that they think that they should be doing. So they're doing these mistakes They're making these mistakes, but they think they should actually be doing— they don't realize that they are mistakes. They're doing them, but they don't realize they're mistakes. That's a very powerful mistake that you can use to your advantage later on. So there's your ones and twos. And then the next thing we want to do now is before we finalize this list, we're not doing this now, we're doing it afterwards, is we're going to go back and we're going to now figure out a way to communicate with our prospects in a way that we can now ask them what are mistakes that they're making to get that feedback. I had a couple people walk up to me on the break and ask me about surveying in order to do that. So I wanted to spend just— I didn't plan to do this, but here's what I wanted to share with everybody because I got enough questions about that before we move on to our next exercise is in developing a survey, there's real strategy to develop a survey and The strategy that I like to teach the best is develop a survey where it's mostly multiple choice except for one question. So all the questions are multiple choice except for one. So, for example, I used this example with Beth when she came up and talked to me was one question that would be if you're providing, for example, marketing solutions, and of course obviously it's not— everybody's not offering marketing solutions. But one really good, good question on a marketing solution where you're providing marketing solutions, one good question on the survey is how many strategies do you have in place currently that are every month are repeatedly bringing you new customers? 0 to 1, 2 to 4, 5 to 7, 8 and above. And most people do not have any strategies in place where every month it's bringing them new customers. So almost everybody is going to check off 0 to 1. And what that does is two things. First of all, it's an easy thing to fill out. It's multiple choice. And number two is, as they're filling it out, it creates to them— it shows them that there's a need for help. So just— so the survey can do two things for you. One thing it can do for you is it can actually identify things to you that can help you to build your what it is you're looking to build in this particular case, what mistakes they're making. The other thing is the process of getting them to fill out the survey can also make them understand that they need solutions. And just the process of filling out the survey can be more valuable than even the information that you're going to get out of it. It's with the process you walk them through. Okay, so, so after we do that, after we survey our prospects, and we find out some more things, hopefully some things that we haven't identified, we're gonna find two things in that process. Number one is we're gonna find things that we haven't identified, and the other thing is we're gonna be finding things that are on top of mind of our prospects. So even if there are things that we have identified, they're gonna be telling us what are the things that they're thinking, and the things that they are thinking are very, very valuable to us because We want to— it's the Robert Collier principle— we want to enter into the conversation that's already in their mind. So when you go then in order to develop the 8 most common mistakes, one of the things that should influence you in choosing your 8 is what are the things that they are thinking already because that's already things that they're going to immediately be able to you're going to be able to hit a nerve with. Now that doesn't say that you only want to use theirs to help you choose your 8 because there could be ones that you've identified, certainly on this number 1 and number 2, mistakes that they don't know they're making. Well, that probably won't be on that list, but that one of those could be very, very powerful. And the other one which could be even more powerful is number 2, mistakes that they think they should be doing. So by pointing out to them things that they are doing currently that they think they should be doing but how actually it's a mistake is a very, very powerful trigger to get people to take action. So then what we want you to do is after you go through this process, we want you to come up with the top 8. And by the way, when I say that, I say that in a way that I want to make sure you understand, so I'm going to be very clear about this. That once you develop your Top 8, that doesn't mean that you need to stop there. So like Fabian's point that she made before is a valid point. She's got her list of whatever, 40-some of some and 20-some of some others, that she says she's going to use this all the time in writing and she's going to rotate them around and use them in her teleseminars. You should always be using the whole list. Also, what I'm saying is not only just use the whole list, but come up with the Big 8. Okay? All right. So, next, the next one we're going to do and we can start handing this out. Well, no, don't start handing it out. Is when I, I started my BGS marketing system in late 1998. And 2 years later in 2000, I actually went back and rewrote my sales letter. And when I rewrote my sales letter, I asked myself this question of, Who is my customer? If I had to say to myself, I'm looking at my customer, who is he? I would then, I figured out who is he and what are his traits. And I actually, it's kind of interesting how this whole thing got across because it was just a happenchance conversation that I had with Rory Thatt. Who is the marketing guru to the restaurant industry. And one day I'm talking to Rory and he says to me out of the blue, he says to me, my customer is Gus. And I said, what do you mean your customer is Gus? He says, my customer is Gus. My customer is a guy that's standing behind the counter in a fast food place and he's answering the phone and he's flipping, he's making pizzas and he's flipping hamburgers and he's got a little bit of sweat rolling off of him and he's got sort of a dirty t-shirt on right now and he's a little grungy looking and his name is Gus. And so when I, every time I talked to him, I got Gus in my mind. So I went back and I went back and said, gee, who's my customer? And at the time I was dealing exclusively, almost exclusively with menswear retailers. By that time, 2000, already other retailers were finding me, but most exclusively with menswear retailers. And I said, gee, who's my customer? My customer became Sidney. My customer was Sidney. And the truth of the matter is, when I thought about it, is the most common name that I had of menswear retailers that I dealt with was Sidney. So my customer was Sidney. And I said, what are the common traits of my Sidney? And I came up with, again, after giving a lot of thought to it, and I really worked at it very, very hard, I came up to, is I came up with another list of of my traits, not common traits, of traits. So what I want to do now is I want to do this next exercise. Now you can hand this out. It's building your own Sidney. Describe your ideal customer traits. And I give you some examples here because I felt you need a little bit of help, but these are just to get you started. So age, their personality, how they live, What they enjoy doing, political affiliation, their religion, male versus female, their marital status, do they have children, do they have grandchildren, on and on and on and on. So if you think about your, your current customers— now this is no longer prospects, this is your current customers. I know you all got customers. Start making the list of what your Sydney's customer traits are. Got it? Does this make you think? Does this make you uncomfortable? Does that make me happy? Yes. Have fun. Build your Sydney. So a bunch of you have built your own Sydney, right? Could we get anybody else who's willing to share their list? Is that— Susan, was that you? Go ahead. Go up to the thing. Just for everybody, go on up. Before you give it, just remind everybody what you do.

This is for my information marketing herd. They are people who want to do voiceover. You would think that maybe these are actors and things like that. They're not. They're for— well, because of my prices and everything, they're for 45 to 60 years old.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. I didn't— so you talk about— but before you do that, okay, I want you to now name your Sidney. What's the name of your ideal customer?

I want to get a name that's male or female because they're 50/50 male or female, so it would have to be Pat or Lee.

Or Chris.

Chris. Let's call him Chris.

Okay. All right. So this is your Chris.

So Chris is 45 to 60 years old. He/she is a boomer man or woman. A secret extrovert, which means that they are the kind of person that's dying to do this, has a million voices, but doesn't share them openly.

That's very interesting. Yeah, that you've identified that.

Yes, very good. Extrovert. They are ready to retire but don't want to sit in a rocking chair. And this is, quote, a direct quote from my customer. Direct quote. Because I always start my program, so what brought you here?

So those two last two things you said, the secret extrovert and ready to retire but don't want to sit in a rocking chair— knowing those two things, I mean, can't you all see how that could be used and copied to Unbelievable powerful copy to really communicate. Those two are great. What's next?

Okay, sure. Married with kids, kids getting married, maybe grandkids. And here's this bias, this is flipping me out. Works in IT or worked in IT and hates it. Feels like they're a slave of corporate America and can't take it anymore. Like just bursting, can't stand to get out. They feel their job is a dead end. This is something they always wanted to do, but they got sidetracked with life because they had to support their family and blah, blah, blah. They prob— has a spouse that works now, so this is like their time, whether man or woman. I'm finding there's— we have one guy that took our boot camp 3 times and he's like our— like the best. He's the dream customer. And he has a wife who works that now is willing to support him while he, you know, to give him— he made a lot of money, he's taken his exit, and now she's gonna back him up with this. So their spouse is very, very supportive. They sing, probably in the church choir. I have a lot of people that talk to me about like a big singing and acting background. They love to travel. They love experience, like it's textbook stuff that Dan identified for selling to boomers. They personality-wise are a little insecure. Again, like sort of like the secret extrovert thing. They're, they're like insecure. They have a big respect for teachers and they don't want to be the teacher themselves, but they respect the teachers. They identify themselves as lifetime learners. And take great pride in that. Very family-oriented. They have a dream, an incredible dream that they feel, and they feel like now's the time. I just wrote a piece about the, the Russert Effect, about Tim Russert, so I, uh, to my continuity program, so they really identify with that. Very creative, like for example, I have one guy in my marketing mastermind that sews his own shirts. Shirts and homeschools his kids.

He sews his own shirts?

He sews his own shirts. He does a good job. It might be horrifying to you, but— I had another woman, a couple of people from Texas, a lot of people from Texas. One woman gave a barbecue. I thought this was brilliant. To initiate her voiceover career, she did a huge Christmas party, which she she did the barbecue and invited all her customers. Very creative in that way. Former media people, people who did radio once. I say once you've smelled the microphone, you never forget it. You get it in that one thing. They did some college radio. They do not live in a big city like New York or LA.

Out of curiosity, that language you just used, once you smell the microphone, Is that language they identify with?

No, I would not even put it yet, the smell of the microphone.

It's a shame. It's a shame they don't identify. It is very good.

Studio equipment has like a—

I thought that was a common trait, they go around sniff microphones.

The wonderful smell of new audio equipment. Some people here probably, like new car smell, we have new audio equipment smell. They confuse action with— they confuse what is it? Action with— accomplishment, activity with accomplishment. So they're like really excited that they got their postcard done, you know, for marketing, and it's like a big deal. They see our program as a third place, somebody at my table said, kind of like Starbucks. So there's a lot of talk about, this is my family, this is the Great Boys family, I'm coming to everything that you do. And that's, yeah, it is nice. I'm very proud that we've been able to give them that feeling. So we—

I think you've done a great job.

Thanks.

I really do. So have a seat, but I mean, because I think that you've identified— I hope a lot of people that didn't come up with such— who have lists that don't have it as— first of all, I hope everybody came up with as good a list as that, but for those of you that didn't come up with lists that had things that were as insightful as that, because there's a lot of very insightful things there. That gives you inspiration to come up with more insightful things like that. And again, by the way, on some of this, getting back to our whole survey strategy that I was sort of talking to you about before, and the purpose of this meeting was not for me to teach you about surveying, but it does suggest to me that maybe I should be doing that in a future meeting now that I think about it, is one of the things that you might also want to do And you got to be more careful with this on your surveys, but you might want to be asking them questions that identify certain traits. Now you're not going to get— you're not going to be able to get as specific, a lot of those real insightful things on your survey because that's going to be too difficult to get out of the survey. But certainly things such as do you live in a city or in a rural area, those things you can learn on a survey. So some of your stuff you could, and that would be helpful in order to putting together your most common traits. So next thing I want to do, and I'm moving unfortunately more rapidly than I'd like to right now, but I want to try to at least get through the whole process with you in order for you to take it with you in order to work on your process beyond this. The next thing I want you to do is to hand out Exercise Number 3. Exercise Number 3 is I want you to name your Sidney. So you got my Sidney's over here. We know Susan's Sidney is Chris. I want you to name your Sidney and determine his or her 8 most common traits from your long list of traits. So now let's come up with our most common traits. And we want to hear— come up with a good name for your own Sidney. So hopefully all of you have your 8 biggest common Traits. I, I listen, I, by the way, I want to just keep saying this over and over and over again to you. What, what happens today doesn't mean that this is the final thing. This, I mean, this really takes some thought and some work and, and think, you know, and, and putting some energy into this and effort into this. But at the same time, you will find that by doing this will get you your marketing so much more focused, your marketing message so much more focused, and more importantly, the response you get to your marketing so much better by being able to figure out exactly how do I talk to my prospects so that they believe that they're talking to me. So with saying that, what is the name of your Sidney and what is their 8 most common traits?

Okay, well, my Sidney—

Am I okay?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My Sidney is named for Frankie, because I like the unisex theme. He or she is a solo entrepreneur, professional or tradesperson, who's had their business for at least 3 years. They work alone or have fewer than 10 full-time employees. They've tried doing some self-promotion or marketing using very traditional media and methods, such as Yellow Pages, business cards and Valpak mailings. They like to be— so they're willing to spend money on marketing. They like to be hands-on with respect to their business and marketing efforts, so they like the do-it-yourself style of marketing. They get little or no help from their family or their staff. They're ambitious but dissatisfied with their efforts to date. They want to to do more. They're the decision maker, the buck stops with them, and they're harried, time-strapped, they know they need help.

Great. And Kim, your third commonality was what again? Read that out.

They've tried self-promotion before using either Yellow Pages, Valpak mailings, a really neat business card, but that's about it.

Are they unhappy with the results?

They're unhappy with those results.

See, I think that needs to be added to number 3. That's a good point. They're unhappy with the results. So now that you've got these, does this help you at all?

I saw the sales letter being written as I spoke.

Okay, good job. Everybody give her a hand. Okay, what's the name of your Sydney?

My Sidney's name is Jake, and he is the president, CEO, or owner of the company. The company does $3 million plus in sales, and they typically have either other locations or other outlets to their business. They are affluent. They're a family-owned and operated business. He's 35 to 55 years old. He knows his industry inside and out. He doesn't care about details. He just wants things to get done. And he's likable and has charisma.

Right. And then you said that he has a family-owned or what business?

Family-owned or operated business.

Yeah. See, that, now that, I mean, in and of itself can lead to a whole different set of frustrations that he's experiencing right now with the whole family. Situation, which that would be a very valuable piece to use. You should be using all 8, but on that one you can hit a big, big nerve with him as far as that's concerned. That's a good job. Okay, that's Jake. Let's hear it for Jake. Okay, from the UK, let's see what these UK people— what's his name, like Jarvis or something? This is Nigel.

Nigel.

Yeah, what's your Sydney's name?

Oh, Sidney's name is John.

John?

Yeah.

We've checked our database on this. You wouldn't believe the amount of Johns we've got.

So you're writing a Dear John letter?

Dear John, yeah. They are 45 to 60, obviously male. They run their own business and have the business for at least 10 years or have worked in a corporate environment, and both of them have said they are fed up with what they're doing. They're looking for something different. They're internet savvy, and they have had their eyes opened to the power of information marketing and marketing online. They are fed up of being information gatherers at this point, and they're also fed up of being let down by other people. They relate to our approach of doing business and our— I didn't want to use the word fun, but we put enjoyment back into business. So they're fed up of where they are, they see what we do, and they like our business approach but the fun enjoyment side of it as well. But more importantly, they also lack confidence in their own ability. We see it all the time. We know they can do it, but they themselves lack confidence in their own ability.

Yeah. So your point that you made about the fact that they are fed up with what they do and they lack confidence in their ability, those are two very, very big emotional triggers that you could be working on with your copy. But obviously, all 8 of them are really good I mean, that's a pretty good focus for your exact client. Good job. So give John our best, okay? All righty. Here's our guy that all his friends are in prison and, you know, he's the guy that has survived that we're proud of. So what's our Sidney's name?

Fred and Ethel.

Fred— oh, we got a couple.

Yes.

Fred and Ethel.

Yes.

That's very, you know— Ingenious.

They'd be— well, they're married couples.

Okay, good.

Age 50 to 70, invested in mutual funds, concerned about outliving their money, they're family-oriented, they have children, they live in the suburbs, and they own 2 cars.

Say it again. Fred and Ethel, what are their commonalities?

All 8 of them?

All 8 of them.

Married couple. Age 50 to 70, invested in mutual funds, concerned about outliving their money, they're family-oriented, they have children, they live in the suburbs, and they own 2 cars.

Right. So obviously, concerned about outliving their money and the fact that they have children— what am I doing here? The fact that they have children, those are your 2 biggest emotional triggers that you got. To really work on your overall profile because those are two big things that are going to create a big emotional response when you talk to them correctly. Very good. So let's hear it for Fred and Ethel. And so here's the guy that's burying his Sidney, okay? So—

All right. Well, thanks to Adam Witty, who is trying desperately to live up to his last name. He helped me name this person. I was having a hard time, and he said, "Why don't you just envision a toe tag with John Doe on it?" So here we go for John Doe.

John Doe.

But our customer is really not a person, it's really kind of the family. So the list of traits are: they're family-oriented, they love the person that died, You'd be surprised that sometimes that isn't always the case. They want to remember them well. They have a sense that they may need help beyond the funeral, beyond the days of the funeral. They value ceremony and they want to and have a custom of involving family, involving their family in all ceremonies, in all family ceremonies. They prefer burial or cremation with a service and they make enthusiastic referrals.

See, I think the thing that you said as far as that they want additional services beyond the funeral is huge. And so I think that you're on to something there as far as talking to your, to people, family members that, because they're not being talked to that way. They're talking all, it's all about getting them to the funeral, but, and what happens at the funeral, but not beyond that. That's big. That's big. And which deals really with your 18-month post-education process. And that's a good thing that you've stumbled on. So let's hear it for John Doe. All right. So this is— what's your Sidney's name?

His name is John as well.

Ah, that's very good. We had two Johns and one John Doe. Okay.

Typically 45 to 65. He has a big house, 5,000 square feet or more usually.

That's cool.

Usually a million dollars plus in value with a second home that is often more— which is often larger and more expensive than the primary home.

That's interesting.

They're Republican, married with children. The older ones have grandchildren as well. Typically business owners in the medical field, so not just doctors but consultants and pharmaceutical kind of people as well. First-generation wealth. Very, very serious people. However, their wives are often very active, outgoing, and fun people.

So— Good for you. I would think that that would— that those 8 things, putting those on paper would be very insightful for you in thinking of how now going out and getting more prospects for your business. Especially, listen, I mean, especially the issue about the fact that they're multifamily homeowners, multi-house owners. And they're owning houses that have a million dollars more in value, that's a gettable list just to go get a select one to just speak to those people. So very good job. Okay, good. So thanks. Let's hear it for the other John here. So what I would tell you to do again is to go back and make your exercise number 2, which is building your own Sydney, Make that list a little bit longer if it needs to be longer, but then more importantly, go to exercise number 3, which is name your Sidney and determine his or her 8 most common traits for your long list of traits. So now you've got sort of like, once you get to this, you've got your 8 most common traits, which by the way, I thought everybody did a great job on that. And you also got, eventually you're going to get to your 8 biggest mistakes they make. And then you're going to look at those 8 biggest mistakes, and you want mistakes on your 8 list of mistakes. I should have mentioned this earlier, where they fall under a couple different categories of mistakes. One is mistakes that they know that they're making. One is mistakes that they are doing and they think they're not even mistakes, so that you now tell them that they're doing these things. See, that's a very powerful thing is when you can identify to them things that they're doing but they don't realize are mistakes. And others are mistakes that they're making that they think that they, that they don't even, mistakes they're making they don't even realize that they're making. So those are the 3 most common and you want to, now you want to treat each of those differently and speak to those each differently. So now you're crafting your message. So now the next thing is this, is this one right here and this is exercise number 4. On this one, you need, what you need to do is you need to sort of put all the pieces of the puzzle together. I need you to Establish your credibility with your Sidney, so whoever your Sidney is, usually John, by building out your own story, letting him or her know that you know what it's like to be in their world. So you want to create your story and speak to them like you know by being in their world. And so if I were Sidney, how would I like to be talked to? The other thing, my little point to I make is use you and your as much as you can as you build your story. As Ron very astutely pointed out yesterday, when you build your story, you're talking about yourself, but then now when you're talking to your Sidney, you're using you and your. You're going to have to use a combination of both in that and say it in the clearest and simplest way that you can. Number 1 is yesterday I gave you the example of how to put together a story of, "Gee, that's interesting. How did you get into that?" Today we dealt with this whole issue of identifying top mistakes that, that your prospects are making. And we also talked about the 3 different kinds of categories of mistakes, the 3 most common kinds of categories of mistakes that should be very helpful to you. We also talked about developing who, who your Sidney is and their 8 most common traits that they have. So you got all those pieces of the puzzle to put together. And now I gave you this piece of the puzzle, which I just gave you, which is establish credibility with your Sidney by building out your own story, letting him or her know that you know what it's like to be in their world. You know what it's like to be in their world. If I were Sidney, how would I like to be talked to? Use you or your and say it in the clearest and simplest way you can. I want to give you a couple more copy boosters today before we go into interesting stuff, because these are a couple that are not in my Creating Copy That Sells course. So these are some extra things. Number 1, this might be in the course: read your copy out loud. Any of you that are writing copy, I always find that when I read my copy, after I finish it, when I read it out loud, I will always go back and make really valuable changes to my copy once I do that. And you just never will see it unless you read it out loud. So read your copy out loud. By the way, this is not a copy booster, but this isn't my Creating Copy That Sells course. One of the best ways to learn how to write good copy, to train your mind, You write, really writing good copy really turns into training your mind how to write so it just happens automatically. One of the best ways is to take really great sales letters. I did this for years and I would actually rewrite the sales letter. So if I would take a Dan Kennedy or a Gary Halbert sales letter, I would actually rewrite it by hand. When you write something, or else you can actually do it on your computer to retype it. When you write something out or you retype it, you will see things and hear things in that copy that you never saw when you read it.

Credit.

I guarantee this. So if you really want to work on your copywriting skills, that's one— that's a really good strategy to do. Halbert used to make people, when he trained them, he used to make them sit there and just write out his sales letters, which, which is another story. Ask for a clear single decision. This is a big copy booster. And now, now don't get this confused with what I said to you yesterday, which is oftentimes you want to get people multiple ways to respond, but ask for a very clear single decision that people have to make. What I find— well, again, picking— where's Tom? Is Tom Trevillian still in the room here? There he is. So like yesterday when I handed him his sales letter, there was just too many decisions that somebody would have to make if they wanted to respond to the thing that Tom was sending out. So you want a very, very clear decision that somebody can make a single decision in order to respond. We tend to talk about all the different things that we offer and we do this and we do that and we do this and you could do this. Ask for one single thing because the whole purpose of making a sale, and people get this wrong all the time, the purpose of making a sale is to get a customer, to acquire a customer. Once you get the person on the single decision then you can then turn that person into a customer and sell them other products and services that you have. But if you try to offer everything that you got to them up front, it will significantly suppress results. I mean, really, I mean, Doc back there in the liposuction deal, I mean, I've got to assume that in your case, you're probably selling many of your patients multiple procedures. But I would also say to you that bringing them in on the single procedure, and once you got them, it's very easy then to sell them on other things you got. But, but as opposed to other cosmetic surgeons that would try to say we do all these things, well, I don't think that's the right strategy to go with at all. Is first get the customer with the single thing and then move from there. The next thing is ask your prospects if you can write your testimonials for them. Here's the deal about testimonials. There's a couple things about that, 'cause people struggle with testimonials. One of the ways they struggle with, they struggle with getting testimonials. The first thing I would tell you is one of the best ways to get good testimonials is to learn when's the best time to ask for them. There's usually a sweet spot in a relationship when you can ask people for testimonies. So first is identifying that. We knew at our menswear store that after the sale was completed, after the customer paid for his purchase, and at that point there's no longer— the relationship changes from having a salesperson trying to sell a customer to actually having somebody paid for their purchase, they were done with their purchase, and now they felt good about everything. That was the time to ask the customer for referrals and testimonials. It was always identifying when's the best time to ask for your testimonials. The other thing is what we often found was, well, we didn't do it in our menswear store, but I've done it with some of my marketing stuff that I've done and with some clients I've taught this to, is that if you want great testimonials, one of the best ways to do it is say to your customer, gee, you know, Gary, you know, I know that, you know, you've taken my copywriting course and that you've written a sales letter that generated over $500,000 in results. And gee, would you mind giving me a testimonial? And then Gary says, sure. He said, listen, if you want to, I'll even write it for you and I'll send it to you and make sure that you're happy with it. And if you're not happy with it, just change it in any way you want to change it. But at the same time, if you want, I'll just take away all the hassles of you having to write it and I'll write it for you. And almost in all cases, people will cheerfully want you to write them for them. And then you do send them to them and if they want to change them a little bit, they change it a little bit. Yeah, Nate.

We had one of our CPA coaching members do something where he had written out 12 testimonials as templates. Templates to put in front of his clients and said, "Hey, pick one of these." And had a lot of them just love that he did that. And he had them oriented to the different hot buttons for—

excuse me—

using his services. And he has like 100 testimonials. Then he modified some and did 12 new templates. And he just went down the list of the different reasons why people wouldn't buy, created his own testimonials to that, said, "Hey, pick one." It was great.

So wherever Miroslav is, that's a good little strategy for you right there, which really will help people. Yes. A lot of times when they do videos, when you put a camera in front of their face, they freeze up.

So if you don't give them something to read ahead of time or give them something to rehearse ahead of time, they get really freaked out about being on camera.

So making it easy for them to provide you with the testimonials— people want to give them to you, but it's also work for them. So making it easy for them significantly increases that. Then the last little copy booster I had is, if you notice yesterday, like the testimonial that I showed about the guy in the UK that is now charging $35,500 for a sales letter, on the top of his testimony I wrote there, I'm now charging $35,500 for a sales letter. I put a headline on top of my testimonial. Now Kennedy taught me that. And in all— in the testimonials that Kennedy— he always does that, is he makes little headlines for his testimonials. And that's a real smart thing to do also. I don't do it as often as I should, and I forget to do it sometimes, but that's a really smart thing to do. Yes, sir? Each testimonial has a headline to it. Each testimonial has a— and by the way, that's an interesting point that you made, Dave. Is the group of testimonials. I am using the T word right now, which is testimonials. I don't use that word when I present them to people that are reading them because testimonials sound like it's something that you've asked people to give you, and I would rather it feel like it's unsolicited comments. I always say things such as, in the retailer case, retailers speak. That's my headline. Retailers Customers, clients tell us, things like that. I don't use the word testimonial because testimonials sound like something that somebody is asking you for, which is what often happens. And it makes it sound like it's better when people just automatically give them to you without soliciting them. Helpful? Rave reviews is another great one. Rave reviews. People are speaking.

Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow, and the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. This free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at NoBSLetter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also get a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month, one from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift and your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.