#125: Sean D’Souza on Why You Should Write Sales Pages and Articles from the Bottom Up

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 125 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. Just a quick reminder that you can find a detailed show notes to this episode including everything we've talked about and summary bullet points as well as all links@b2b launcher.com Episode 125 Writing Sales Pages Landing pages long form content or detailed articles is not typically an easy thing to do. Getting started can be a real drag. You know what I'm talking about, right? It's just staring at that blank screen. Writer's block can take over and even when you get going, it's often difficult to get and maintain the momentum. You need to really be productive with the project. But what if you looked at it a little differently? What have you approached the writing a little differently and you started writing the piece from the bottom up? And what if that bottom up method helped you create a quicker and far superior product? That's exactly what we're going to talk about in this episode where I'm joined by New Zealand based marketing and persuasion expert Sean d' Souza and he is going to explain his bottom up method of writing and why it's more effective than the traditional top to bottom approach that many of us use. A couple of quick points before I bring Sean on. First of all, we got a little bit off on a tangent at the very beginning. We just started. Sean and I started talking about a few things that weren't directly related to the the topic. I tend to geek out on this stuff and I just started asking him some questions that, you know, totally not his fault. It was just all me. So just bear with us. I think there's some really valuable and interesting stuff that Sean shares with us there in terms of marketing, psychology, persuasion techniques. But just bear with us. We're going to get to the core of the interview about starting about 10 minutes in. The other thing I would say is that the discussion is spot on for copywriters. So if you write sales marketing copy, this is going to be very, very applicable. But even if you're not a copywriter, I would say that most of this still applies to writers as well. So my suggestion is to still give it a listen even if you're not writing sales copy every day because I think you can walk away with some very useful nuggets. So with that, let's go right to our interview. All right, Sean, so great to have you on the show.

It's a pleasure to be on edge.

You know, I don't know if you remember this, and I should have mentioned this when we were just talking, you know, before we started recording, but I first connected with you. Gosh, it must have been about 14 years ago. 13, 14 years ago. My first kind of foray into authority marketing, which that's what we call today, was I was publishing some articles in a third party publication called Conversion Chronicles. Some outfit out of Europe.

Correct. That was. That's Steve's website. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't even know they're still around, but. But you were one of the guest contributors as well.

Okay.

And yeah, it said. So we, we just. I think we connected there. Maybe we exchanged some emails. But I've known of you ever since then and was always impressed with. With what you had. But it's. It's been a long time.

Yes, 17 years now. We've been online. Wow.

Before the Internet was. The Internet.

That's correct. When the Internet was just a place where you put in information and people read the information and then they said, oh, good job.

I want more of that.

Correct. Yes.

So, yeah, it's been a while. And I just. It's funny that we connected again because you're someone that I wanted to bring onto the show at some point. And it's just cool the way it just kind of happened. And so it's great to have you here. And we're going to talk about something that I know it's near and dear to your heart. But before we get to all that, I was curious about a couple of things. And you're really into not just copyrighted, but you really get into the psychology behind this. This. Right. And just Persuasion. Human how people think in a lot of times, some. So much of this is counterintuitive, but I'm curious how you got into this crazy world and what attracted you to just kind of the art of copywriting and persuasion.

Well, I'm like a card player. I really want to know how to play the game. I'm not so much after. There is a song by Sting that's. That completely describes what I do, which is I don't play for money, I don't play for respect. I play to find the answer. So I want to know when everyone says this can't be done, how Do I do it? So it's that challenge of just finding the answer. It's like, is it possible just to change the photograph of the person on the testimonial and do nothing else and then improve your conversion rate? Or is it possible to just put photographs of people that are very greedy on your testimonials and then get all greedy people? That kind of thing is of more interest to me than just this Constant. I made 12 million, I made 15 million. I made. Because we live a very good life from what we've done. And when people look for these little sub, sub, sub, sub subtopics, what they get is a very niche audience looking for that kind of stuff. And I didn't look for the audience, I'm just looking. This is just a big search for me. It's just like a 12 year old or a 7 year old goes off in search of squirrels or something like that. It's just fun, you know, that's, that's the way I look at it. But there has to be a pattern at the end of it, so. So I'm looking for the pattern always.

You're a real student of the craft and you dig deeper than I think a lot of people do. I think we're all very curious people. If you're a good copywriter. I've always found copywriters are curious people. But you really think about some stuff that, gosh, I never even thought to ask, which is fantastic.

I think there is a lot of stuff. I think that everything can be broken up. So for instance, I wrote a book on testimonials several years ago. And you know, how much can you cover on testimonials? So I sat down and I started writing about those testimonials and it took 125 pages. And that shocked me. What's even shocking is if I were to write that book once again, it would be different. So it, to me, that's just the fun thing of just finding out what is it that we do and why we do what we do.

You know, I'm curious. There are a lot of things that are counterintuitive about copywriting and just human behavior in general. But what have you found? Is one of the most counterintuitive aspects of human psychology. And maybe as it relates to kind of the work we do, one of.

The things that is most fascinating to me is that people will buy at a higher price every single time. Give them a chance to buy at a lower price and they will pick the higher price. But if you give them if you don't give them the right information and you don't give them the right amount of information, then they will always pick the lower price every single time. It doesn't matter what your reputation, it doesn't matter what's being offered, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters if you don't give them the right information and the right amount of information. But if you do it, they will always pick the higher price. That's something that has been very counterintuitive to me, but consistent. So it's not counterintuitive at all when you think about it.

Now, when you say they'll pick the higher price with the right information, are you saying if you position it a certain way, they will pick the higher price, or will they pick the higher price with the right information and given two choices in front of them?

Yes. So that is also part of the right information. So they will pick the higher price when given a choice between yes and yes. So if you give people just one choice, which is buy now, then they will either buy. So you have a yes and no situation there. But when you're given a yes and yes, what you have is a direct comparison. But that's not enough. What I found is that if you don't get the elements right, if you don't give the right amount of information, what people will do is then pick the cheaper option instead of the more expensive one. But what we do on our website is we've had two options consistently. We call it the regular and the premium. And you don't have to reinvent anything. You just go there, there is a box, you know, like a pricing box, and all you have to do is replace your stuff there, just whatever you're selling. And it's very important that you just replace it. If you do any creativity whatsoever, it doesn't matter how smart you think you are, you try to change it from a red tick to a blue tick. You change anything other than just the information, then people will buy the regular or not buy at all. And that's what I found consistently, that most of the clients that come to our site, when they're given the option, and even knowing that there is this regular and premium option, even knowing exactly, I'll tell them what is happening and why it's happening, they will always consistently pick the more expensive option. Sometimes that option is just $5 more, sometimes it's $50 more, sometimes it's $500 more, and they will still pick it. And this hinges on a very simple fact, and that is when Somebody is ready to buy. They have already bought the product in their head. They bought the product three, four days before, maybe three weeks before. And when they're ready to buy, it all hinges on one thing and one thing alone. And that is the bonus. So if you are given, say, a computer or a computer with a box of chocolates, which one are you going to choose?

I will take the one with a box of chocolates any day.

Yeah. Now think about it. That computer is probably worth $3,000, and the box of chocolate is worth $10. But I take away the box of chocolates and I say, you can't have the box of chocolates. And immediately your brain goes into this, why can't I have the box of chocolates? But you didn't set out to buy a box of chocolates. You didn't set out to get that box of chocolates. You set out to get the computer. So why is the box of chocolates so important?

That is crazy. Right? And it's so true. As you're walking me through this, I'm thinking, yeah, I mean, I could just go buy a box of chocolates down the street.

Correct.

It doesn't matter.

And what I found. When we've. We don't do lots of testing and stuff like that. The way we look at our business is very simple. We look at results. We say, we've got 30 seats to fit, to fill in this workshop. We're going to fill 30 seats, and we're going to do it as quickly as possible. Because, you know, I'm in marketing. I don't like marketing because it takes too much time, all of this nonsense. If, you know, I have to do all these joint ventures, I have to do all these ads. I have to do all this stuff. It's too much time and effort. I really want to. I really want to be the teacher. I really want to get the result for my client. I don't want to waste all this time doing marketing and resending emails and stuff like that. So the way we look at stuff is like, how quickly can we get this thing sold out? How can this be Guns n Roses concert? How can this be, you know, a concert, that Adele concert that sells out in like 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, sells out completely. And that's why I'm interested. Because then once I have that ability to sell out very quickly, now I can focus on creating the content, on delivering better benefits to the. If. If I were a copywriter, that's what I would spend my time doing. I would spend my Time figuring out, learning, doing all that stuff instead of doing all this endless follow up. So that's precisely why. And we sell like an article writing course, it's three and a half thousand dollars. It's sold to small business owners. It's a very big amount to just throw at three and a half thousand dollars and it sells out in 20 minutes. We sell a copywriting course, sells out in 20 minutes. That's it. You literally, it's like a train in Japan. If you go to Japan and you get on the railway station and you think, well this is the 120 train and you're going to get it at 121. No, at 120 it leaves the station. And that's how you really have to look at conversion. It's not that it converts, but how quickly does it convert without all the fuss and the follow up that you require?

And that's a very interesting aspect of the conversion conversation. I never really heard anybody else but you really talk about that because everyone else is really focused on optimizing the conversion, lifetime customer value and all these things. And you know, there is a time and a place for that. But I love the fact that you're talking about speed more than anything else because that is a, that's huge. You're right. I mean if you, if you can avoid having to spend three weeks marketing something, I mean, how much time and effort are you really saving there? And resources, it's huge.

It's energy. At the end of the day, what we're looking at is not time, it's energy. So when you finish a day, it's 5pm say or 6pm and then you're not asleep till 10pm or 11 or whatever time. So you've got four, five, six hours sometimes before you go to bed. But you don't have the energy and so you're burning all this energy. And what people say when they don't have time is they're actually saying I don't have the energy to do this stuff. And all of that follow up is really nice because it teaches you if I do this, that's what happens. If I change that, this is what happens. But if you had time to kind of say you sold this one in 20 minutes and the next one took a day, then why did it take a day? That's the kind of thing that you need. And a lot of people go, oh wait, well you sold in just a day. But for us that it's not failure, but it kind of what I want to know is. I want to know the answer. So recently what we did was we had a workshop in New Zealand. And of course the workshop was marketed to everyone on the planet. So we have people coming in from the us, uk, Australia and from New Zealand itself. And I'm a copywriter. But what I did was I wrote no copy on the page. I just wrote one line, which is the title of the workshop. And we expected people to pay. It wasn't a very expensive workshop. It was around $1,000, but they had to fly from wherever. They had to come here for at least a week, if not couple of weeks. And they had to make a decision based on one line. How do you do that?

Hmm, that's huge. One line. Now we're going to get into some of this, but I'm curious. One line to an audience that understands already what this is and has been waiting for the opening of this workshop.

Correct. And that's part of what copywriters understand, but don't put enough emphasis on. And that is, it's called the pre sale. And what the pre sale is literally is we go through pre sale. I am going to get married on this date, which is the 15th of July, and all of the time before that you have this backing up. You know, it's almost reversing yourself in time until that date. And on that date everyone shows up. You know, people you haven't seen, uncles, aunts, people you haven't seen in ages, all of them show up. And the reason why that happens is because the actual event is a non event. They've already sold themselves into that event. So often I would ask clients which part of the sales page did convert, got you to buy into this? And they go, I didn't read the sales page. So yeah, so these, so, so there, there are two aspects of this. And the first aspect is when you have this immense amount of trust and how do you build that trust? And to me, how you build that trust, whether you're dealing with clients, as in you're dealing with, you know, people who you write copy for, or whether you are dealing with people that you're selling information to, what you, the way you, you, you build that trust is to go into these sub, subtopics, this esoteric stuff that is so fascinating that they think, wow, this is so cool. So instead of saying, I'm going to teach you how to write headlines, you're going to say, I'm going to teach you how to write headlines using testimonials. And now you've taken them On a trip that they. It's fascinating, you know, it's like, it's like the side tour instead of the main tour. And once. Yeah, so, well, so.

So here's, here's what I'm thinking, right? There are a couple of. There actually many different paths we could take there. And I'm already thinking we may have to have a part two of this conversation at some point. But what I'd like to ask you about is really kind of the process you go through in terms of your sales letter, your sales copy. Because I think this really, you have some valuable lessons for anyone. Even if you're not purely a copywriter, if you are mostly writing marketing content, a lot of this still applies. And I'm fascinated by the way you approach these projects because unlike most writers, you don't start from the top down. You kind of start in the middle of the conversation and, and then kind of expand. So can you walk us through the process that you use and then why you go about writing copy this way?

So why is very simple. I started writing copy at Leo Burnett. I don't know if people know this, but it's one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. And so I've been writing copies since 1990 or something. And for me, the most frustrating task in the world is to write copy. So, you know, so many years, almost 25 years of writing copy, and it's frustrating. And the reason why it's frustrating is the copy. The whole process of copywriting has so many elements. You've got the headline, the problem, the solution, the objection. You've got so many things on a sales page and for me it was very easy to not write it. So literally half of the product that we sell on our website at Psycho Tactics, my wife has just taken stuff that I've written in the past and just put it together and we've sold product from that. But that really frustrated me, especially as we moved into what we call the new website. So when you look at the old websites, you had this one long page that went all the way down. New websites are built for mobile and that gave me a real opportunity because when you really look at a new website, it's a mobile friendly website, it's built in boxes, which is very cool because if you just knew what to put in the box, then you could speed up that copywriting. So my challenge was, it takes me about a week to write copy one sales page. How could I do it in three days? Or how could I do it in like a day? And A half. But for me to do it, that's okay. What if someone with no capability or very low capability could do the same? And so I had to reconstruct it so that we started off with the least intimidating part, because the, the most intimidating part is the headline. And so we start off actually Gary Halbert, many years ago. I don't know if people know him, but he's a very, he was a very good copywriter, the late Gary Halbert. And he would start off at the Bullets. And I thought, that's where I need to start. So what we did was we. I had to go back one step further. Now if you look at the construction of a sales page, it has a headline. Usually it should have a sub headline. It then has the main problem, the consequences of not dealing with that problem. Then we get to the solution, and from there on we get to the benefits, the features, the bullets. And it goes down that way. If you start at just listing the features, that's the best way to start. So you start at the features and then you write 60 features. And I'm not kidding, you can take a book and you can say, okay, this book has, I don't know, 200 pages. Let's split it up into three sections, say, starting a project, following through, and then, I don't know, second follow up or something. And you go, okay, let's. The first part, let's write 20 bullet points for that. The second part, let's write 20 bullet points. Third part, let's write 20 bullet Points. Say you have, say you're running a service or you're writing for a service. Well, there'll be phase one, phase two, phase three. Find 20 for phase one. Fine, 20 for phase two. Find 20 for phase three. Just the features, just points, nothing else.

No benefits, no, but just features.

Nothing, nothing, just features. You know, it does this, it has. So I've got this microphone in front of me. It's got a stand, it's got this, it's got that. It's just, just point after point after point. You know how long it takes for people to do that? 20 minutes, 30 minutes, easy. Now you have to turn that into kind of bullets. I don't really care. So say you go, okay, so what is the benefit of that feature? And you go, okay, this is the benefit. It helps you do this, it helps you do this, it helps you do this Again, it's like a half an hour to a one hour exercise. You know, you take a break in between. Don't just go after it, but if you took a break in one hour, you could finish the features and the benefits easily. Then you turn that into bullets. Now, the easiest way to turn anything into bullet is to put a how and a why before it. So you go, how? The microphone's platinum edge can help you do this, right? And what you want to do is put a how, how, how, how, why, why, why, why. For pretty much all of them, just randomly put a how. And then you will get the answer to how to create that, that benefit and feature. But in between, you want to create curiosity, because that's what a bullet is all about. It's about curiosity. And once you've written how to get to New Zealand, you want to put a bracket which says without or, and, or even just after the bracket. If you just put without and, or even, you now ramp up the curiosity a lot. So how to get to New Zealand without breaking the bank, you know, breaking your bank account. How to get to New Zealand even if you don't have the tickets to do so. Now how to get to New Zealand and see Australia in the same trip as well. So you ramp up the curiosity just by doing that. Once you've got these 60, you've got magic.

Wow. So start. Just to recap, we're talking about a list of just features not in bullet form. You just kind of brainstorm, no friction. You just kind of start writing them down. Then once you have the 60, let's say, then add the benefit. And then the third step would be add without, without, and, or even to add that element of curiosity.

That's it. And within probably a couple of hours. And we're not talking back to back, but say maybe the morning or half the day, you know, you've taken breaks in between. And I always recommend breaks. People tend to work, you know, let's go back to back. No, you want your brain to do something and then leave it. Even if you do it like, I'll do it on Monday, I'll just write the bullets, just write the features. On Tuesday, I'm going to put in the benefits. On Wednesday, I'm going to put in the bullets. That is actually better because your brain has had time to think about stuff. When you do go about it that way. Now what you've got is you're building the ground level. So this is the, you know, if you look at it from a construction point of view, this is the rock that you're building, the whole sales that are on. And when you do that now you've got the other elements, which is You've got bonuses. If you pick just one random thing from here, you get a bonus. And if you don't believe me, try it out yourself. Just write this list and then just put your finger on one of them and you get a bonus. And all you have to do with that bonus is you have to then explain why that bonus is so important to me. Now, as we spoke about earlier, you can increase your prices by 10 or 15% every single time. If you have the right bonus. That's your chocolate with. With the computer, and it's sitting right there with those features. With that list that you have.

Do you randomly pick one? Just. I mean, does it really matter? Do you have a criteria for picking which one will be the bonus?

Most people think that you have to have some. And that's what I used to go. I used to write an entire sales letter. And then I know the importance of the bonus. You know, I wrote the whole book on pricing, at least my book on pricing called dartboard pricing. And I'm going, I know I have to have a bonus, but I'm so tired after writing this. I'm going to just put something there. And you don't want to just put something that you. You can pick something from this list. Now sometimes you think, well, you know, this thing, this is really important. Like, there was this guy a long time ago, Corey Rudle. He very early started this Internet marketing thing. He died in a car accident, but.

I remember that, yeah, he was one of the big ones. 17 years ago.

Yes. And he wrote this thing about how. How to buy a car. And then he wrote all these bullets. And people would go to one bullet and they would go, how to buy a car at $50 over dealer price. And they go, I want that thing. So they didn't even want the rest of the product. They just wanted that one thing. And usually either you can do it yourself, and people say, well, how could it be random? But I can tell you if you have sat down and you've spent your time writing those bullets, you can literally pick one random thing and you don't believe it. Go to one of our pages on our website and just randomly pick one of them. And you go, yeah, that's what I want. But when you have the bonus now, you, you know, that's not like a side actor. That's not a supporting actor. That's like the main thing. So you have to give it enough spotlight. Why is it important? Put a graphic of what it does. Now you have to dress up that bonus so that After a while, I can't focus on the product itself, I can't focus on the computer, I can only focus on the chocolates. So now I have to say, these chocolates were made, were handmade, they have this in them, they were built by this. And now suddenly I'm not interested in the computer. The computer is just a by the way thing. So you've got your benefits and features, but you've got your benefits and features, you've got your bullets. The thing is that when you have benefits and features, you can't use all those benefits and features in that way. So you can have a lot of bullets on a page. You can have 20, 40, 60 bullets on a page, but you can't. When you have the. When you're using the benefits and features, you have to put each benefit and feature in a paragraph. Now, two things. The first thing is that if you take, say, six of those, so say you started out with 60 bullets, you get it down to say, I've got to use maybe six of these. Benefits and features are really powerful. And that makes six paragraphs on the page. So that on a normal web page, looking on a big monitor, that's quite a lot to go through. So if you. Every paragraph pushes the page lower and lower on mobile, that's insane, you know. So five or six benefits and features is all you can ever hope to put in paragraphs. So you've got five or six paragraphs. And then after that, if you decide, I'm going to put 10 benefits and features, you're just completely overdoing it because people will read bullets. People will buy entire products based on a single bullet. I've gone, I bought into an $8,000 workshop over a single bullet. And I can tell you there are people that do that. There are people many people will buy based on a single bullet. Which bullet? We can't tell that for sure, but what we can tell is that if you have all those bullets, one of them will strike them. If you have five or six benefits and features in those paragraphs each. Now, we're building a superb case and we haven't even looked at the headline or the top section. We have a bonus. We have benefits and features. We have bullets. We have got an outstanding thing. Now we have to look for the uniqueness. Again, it's in the bullets. You made all those bullets, One of them. And sorry to say, but again, just any one of them could be your uniqueness. But I have a different formula for uniqueness than I used to have years ago. And what I found was that people were still struggling with the uniqueness. So I made it really simple for people to get to the uniqueness. So it just goes like this. I say, when you walk into a room, say you decide that you wanted X ray vision when you step out, what do you want?

When you step out of the room?

Yes.

So you need, you want to be able to look in.

Yeah. You want X ray vision, right? When you step in, you want X ray vision. When you step out, what do you want? X ray vision, right? Yes, that's it. So if you want to figure out the uniqueness independently of all these bullets and features and all of this rasmataz, just ask yourself this. When the person finishes, they buy something from you. Do they want information or do they want a result? And the answer is, they always want a result. So say for instance, we have the article writing course. And you go, why do people buy into this article writing course when I got such a good article writing course? And why does show on sellout? Well, there are many reasons, but one of the primary reason is that the result is very clear. It says, In 12 weeks from now, it doesn't matter whether you take three days or five days or 17 days to write an article. In 12 weeks from now, you will write an article of magazine quality and you will write it in under 90 minutes.

Wow, that's a heck of a promise. Yes, it's a heck of a result.

Correct. We have a headline course. We do the same thing. We say, you know, everyone tells you you have to test a thousand headlines. You have to do that. But what if you could write headlines like you could write perfect headlines the first time? Just like you speak, right? You don't go, oh, what did I just say two minutes ago? Should I test what I just said two minutes ago? That doesn't make any sense. If you already know what you need to put in place, you don't have to go back and test it. Of course, you can test it to see which one does better. But people struggle to just put it together. So what we say is, in eight weeks from now, you will write eight headlines, eight different types of headlines on the same topic, and you will do it in under 10 minutes and every one of them will be a winner. Wow. It's very hard to argue with that kind of logic, which is, I don't really want to listen to this podcast because it's giving me information. I want to listen to this podcast because it's giving me a result. When I finish this podcast, I Can go and write 60 bullets and I can use it following that method, I'll go and write 60 points. Then I will go and put the how to it. I'll put the why to it. I'll put the end after the brackets. It's very precise. There is a result. So if we do the second version of this podcast, there will be people listening. The third one, they will listen. If it's information, they will listen up to a point. And this is the problem with most copywriters, information people, everyone, they think that information or content is king. And frankly, we don't want any more content. We just want a result.

We do. We do. So to kind of recap where we are so far, 60 bullets, we found the maybe six that we're going to go with, turn those, flesh those out into paragraphs. Now, I'm assuming that with a lot of the ones that are left over, you can probably use in your fascinations list. Right. The. Here's what you'll learn. Um, so some of this can be. You don't throw it away. This is probably reusable, correct?

Right. So. So out of those 60, 54 are still going to. So. So if you wrote 60 points, 54 are going to stay as those points which would be turned into bullets or any other form. Form you want. The six of them are going to be your paragraphs which are benefits and, you know, like paragraphs going into a little more detail.

That's the meat of your sales letter, essentially, or beyond the headline and lead. And then so. So let's. Let's maybe segue into headline and lead. How do you make that shift at that point?

You don't ever write it yourself. You never sit at your desk trying to figure it out. You just call up a client. Now you have to. This is what I call in the brain audit, what I call the target profile interview. And the target profile interview is not based on a Persona. It's not based on what you think the client wants. It's based on what the client says they want. So what do you do is instead of looking at a target audience, which is a complete, completely stupid thing to do, it's like saying, okay, my mom wants a birthday present, but let me think of what all the moms in the world want, and then give that present to my mother.

Not very effective.

Correct. And you wouldn't say, let's make a Persona of my mom. Let's put this part together and make this Frankenstein monster. And that's what my mom would represent. Instead, why make it so hard and so much of conjecture. When you can just go and speak to your mom and say, you know, you've got like 10,000 things in your house. What would you like for your birthday? And she's going to tell you. When, you know, people say, for instance, I. You know, what I do is I build websites. And you go, well, okay, let me go and speak to someone who wants to build a website. And it depends on who you're speaking to. So if you're speaking to, say, someone who already has a website, then they have a different experience than someone who just wants to build a website. And you go, okay, let's speak to the person who already has a website. And they go, you know, the last time I worked with a website developer, it was great, but every time I had to make a change, I had to go back and ask them to fix something. And they were. It was like being in a house where you had 20 rooms, but 15 of the rooms were locked. And then you had to go and ask the landlord for the keys. Now, this is the kind of emotion that you don't see so much in sales letters, because what a lot of copywriters do is they sit at their computer and if you just go and do the target profile interview, you just pick up the brain audit. Just look at what the target profile thing is all about. You will find that the client gives you the headline, they give you the main problem that they have. They give you the consequences. You just have to ask them questions. But you have to pick the client. And the client that you have to pick is not a random client. The client that you have to pick is someone who desperately wants that service and is willing to pay for it. Both of them are very important. They need it desperately. They're willing to pay for it. Take, for example, the microphone that I'm using right now, the RE20. It's a very expensive microphone. I have five other microphones. Why would I buy it? You have to get into my brain. You can't say, here's a great microphone. No, no, no. I. Microphones pay attention to me. So why am I going to buy the RE20? I'm going to buy the RE20 because it's the studio mic. It has been used for all these years. I want my voice to sound as professional as it sounds in my brain. That's the problem I want to solve, right? I can hear all the other podcasts. I can hear how they sound, and mine doesn't sound like it. So here's what I want and when you ask the person that, they will specifically tell you what they want. And then you put that on the headline. Would you like a microphone that doesn't sound like some tinny box thing and sounds exactly like those professional podcasters in the studio? You go, yep. And then the first paragraph is like, you've tried your best, you bought all the best software, you've done all the homework, you've spent all the money. You probably have two or three microphones sitting around and you're still not getting the quality. And the reason is that there is this gray looking, boring mic that costs a lot of money. Why would you buy another mic? And the person goes, yeah, why would I buy it? And you go, here's the answer, here's the solution. So what you've got there is a headline, you've got a sub headline, you've got your biggest problem, you've got the consequences of ignoring that problem. And then you go, presenting the RE20, here's why you should buy it. And that takes you to the point where you describe that. And then past that you get your benefits and features. Past that you get your bullets. Past that you get your bonuses, your objections, all the rest of the sales page.

Now, I'm curious if you're working with a client and so how would you go about this? You know, you'd want to talk to. It sounds like you'd want to talk to a prospective customer of the product or service. So how do you go about setting this up? And I know there's probably a lot of detail here, but can you summarize how you would go about this? And then just as important, what question would you ask?

So there are two types of clients. First is a product that doesn't exist in the market. And then there is a product that exists in the market. If you've got the second one, it's very easy. So if you were trying to sell something that, like websites in the year 2000, it was a very hard sell because people didn't want a website. What was the point of a website? But now that you're selling a website, people know about it. So now you just have to find the client's client and speak to them. Okay, so that's the first thing. But if you, what if you have a product that they don't already know about? So for instance, if I said to you, okay, I'm writing a book on testimonials, I'm really fascinated with testimonials, I want to dig into testimonials. And you go, who's going to buy a book on testimonials, let alone pay $50 for it? Well, I'm not selling the book on testimonials. I am selling already existing problem and then linking it to testimonials. So the already existing problems are that clients don't pay you on time, you don't get good enough clients, you don't get the clients that are worthy of your work and reputation, and you're not sure why this happens. And the answer. So the problem is an already existing problem, and I'm going to link it to testimonials. And I say that, you know, when you have the right testimonials, when you have the right photographs, when you have the right captions on the testimonials, then you get clients that love you, that pay you on time. So you have this scenario where you don't have a product and you have to kind of then find the problem and link it to that product, or you already have the product and the client's client or the client themselves knows that problem intimately and they will speak to you. So the questions you have to ask are, well, it actually follows the brain audit. So it's, you know, the question. So the brain audit has seven bags, as they call them, seven red bags. And each of those red bags are like the problem, the solution. So you're asking them. I mean, there are. You have to. It's there in the brain audit. So it's better to read.

By the way, just. Sorry to interrupt, but could you tell us real quickly what the brain audit is for people who are not familiar?

Essentially, it's a book that was written back in 2002, and it talks about this concept. It says that people don't buy because of a factor of hesitation. So it's like this. You get on a flight, you put seven red bags on the flight, and then when you get off at the other end, you're waiting at the carousel, waiting for your bags, and one bag comes out and you pick it up. The second bag comes up, you pick it up. So you go like that, four bag, fifth bag, six bag, and the seventh bag doesn't show up. So when do you leave the airport? And you only leave the airport when you have all your bags. And this is how clients buy. If you leave even one bag out, they decide to ask that, no, I've got to speak to my wife, I'm going to speak to my accountant. So they get into the state of hesitation. And what the brain audit shows you is not just what the bags are. But what is the sequence of the bags and why it has to roll out in that sequence? And the target profile interview enables you to get those bags out from the client in an interview, which is you ask them, so now that you have a website, what is the problem that you're facing with your website? Why do you want a new website? And they go, because I'm sick of having to deal with developers who lock me out of my own site. And you go, what do you mean by lock you out of your own site? So essentially, you're following the thread of the conversation. You're doing what Larry King does. You've got a recorder. You always have to have a recorder and a pad because you're making notes at the same time as you're recording the stuff. You're going to transcribe what they say, not translate, transcribe, because they're going to use words like, I feel like. I feel like a prisoner in my own sight. And you don't go around and say, do you feel trapped in your own sight? No, no, no, no. You say, do you feel like a prisoner in your own website? Use the exact words. Because those words have a. When someone is complaining to you, they usually have. Not usually. They always have a sense of emotion about it. Frustration, despondency, they always have that. And it is expressed in their language, whichever language you speak. So when you go and you convert it, when you translate it, you kill most of that emotion.

Yeah, and yeah, it's important to use the same language. There, There's a. Yeah, and that's. That's key. You know, in my case, I guess the way I would go about this would be I could reach out to my audience and maybe somebody who hasn't bought a certain training program, I could see if I could interview them, you know, just to kind of get a glimpse into their world, you know, what, what, what is it? What are your pain points? What are you suffering through when it comes to this?

And then.

But I'm curious, also, there's value in going out and talking with people who have bought. So if it's an existing product or service, people who have bought that product or service just to kind of get the before and after, do you think there's value there at this point when you're trying to figure out the headline?

I used to think that it was okay, but my wife and I were just talking about, you know, she had an operation almost 10 years ago and she doesn't think about it. She can relate to it, but that pain. If you were to interview her 10 years ago, she would describe in graphic detail what you needed to do to get rid of that pain. You know, she would go, I can. If I had a knife right now, I would probably kill you. I'm in that much pain. Right. She would never describe it that way now. So a client that has their problem solved can kind of go back in time, but they don't have that graphic detail that you get from someone who is just itching to get that product right now, that service right now. And my recommendation in the past would be, well, you could just ask me. You know, I used to struggle before, and I can tell you what my struggle was. But no, I would go after someone that is just on the edge of that purchase. But, and this is very crucial, they should be in a position to pay or buy their product. They should not be speculative buyers. They should be just at the edge. So it's almost like they're hesitating just before buying the product. Not just someone who is thinking about buying the product.

Now, it might. So just to kind of go back to that, then how do you find that person? Specifically, I'm thinking if you're working for a client, so you're writing the sales letter for a client, how can you identify someone who's on the cusp?

So now when you're working with a client, you're always going to run into some kind of difficulty. And I think the best way, and just to counter what I just said, you're always going to run into a lot of restrictions that you would not have if you were just working with your own clients. Because, you know, with your own clients, okay, this guy has asked these questions. They're very keen. I could have an interview with them. That's much easier. When you're working with a client, you definitely run into restrictions. And let's say someone has just bought something like a week ago or three days ago, that pain is still very strong with them. So, you know, after my wife had the accident, after she had the pain a week after that, she could still be very graphic about it. But three months, no.

And one last question regarding, then that makes. That makes sense. How do you make that final decision? So let's say you talk to two or three of the right kind of customers and they're going through this pain, but you get three different facets of the pain or three different pain points. How do you make that final decision as to what you're going to go with in terms of your headline and lead you don't.

You don't go after three. You go after one. So what you're really doing is say you're going after Jane. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to attract all the Janes of the planet. That's all. You're not trying to get Maria, you're just trying to go after Jane. And Jane's problem is very specific. And she's got that problem about her website. She's sick of getting locked out, and that's it. And she will tell you the primary problem, probably the secondary problems. You put that on your page and you go, but what about Maria? Build a separate page. If that's so important to you, build a separate page. This is the Internet age. You can print one leaflet at a time, one brochure at a time, one book at a time. If your job is to get all the Janes of the world, there are enough Janes on the planet. Don't go after Jane and Maria and someone else. Just go after Jane. Maria will look at it and go, that's not my exact problem. But yes, I understand it. I didn't realize that was a problem before I bought it. So they figure it out. It's like pizza. It's not like pizza is ever sold for breakfast, but you wake up and you get cold pizza from the fridge, which no one sells, Right. You still eat it that way.

I've never done it.

Oh, you've never done it. So you know, that's what I'm saying. No one ever sells cold pizza and leftover cold pizza. But is there a market for it? Absolutely. There is a market for just people who like pineapple on pizza. Right. To many people, it's utterly disgusting. To some people. So you're only appealing to people. See, that's what. That's what Domino's did so well, people don't understand this. They try and say, well, what if we got this person and that person? Domino's could have had a whole bunch of stuff, but they only focused on, we're going to get there in 30 minutes or it's free. They knew that their pizza could be tastier. They knew that the pizza could be vegetarian, it could be bigger, smaller, whatever. These are all different pain points. The reasons why some businesses do so much better than other businesses is because their copywriters or their business owners have the ability to sacrifice. Because when you sacrifice and you don't go after three people, you go after one thing. You know that you get that pain point and you Go, how do I know it works? Well, look at it yourself. Do you feel like that when you have a website? Does the other person feel like that? The answer is pretty self evident.

That is powerful stuff and that is something that I find very difficult to do and I know a lot of other writers find very difficult to do because we want to cater to everybody. The problem, though, and a great reminder here is when you cater to everybody, you cater to no one. And I love that reminder that, you know, just focus, focus your message on Jane and you're going to get all the Janes of the world. Getting all the genes of the world is better than getting some of the Janes and, you know, maybe a Maria.

Right?

So, yeah.

And Jane loves cold pizza.

Yes.

Leftover cold pizza.

Everyone does. Fantastic.

Not everyone. Not everyone.

Well, they. The others who say no won't admit it. So they just, they don't know what they're missing out. So, Sean, this has been a great conversation. We definitely need to do a part two of this because there's a lot here. But I love that you've given us kind of a framework on how to approach a sales letter. And I think, and I hope listeners will understand that there's a lot you could take here for article writing, for other marketing pieces. I love the concepts because really that's what matters. It's just starting in the middle, flushing that out and then going to the top. And you've given us some great reasons why. Before we leave, though, I want to make sure people know how they can connect with you, how they can learn more about you. Where should I send them?

Well, they should read the Brain Audit and there's a. You can go to psychotactics.com xbrain and there is a copy, I mean, chapter. You can read it. You will get hooked on it. It's. It's very readable. It's like weekend reading. Lots of cartoons. There are like 99 cartoons in it.

That's right. And you're a cartoonist, which is.

That's right.

You do all your own stuff. That's awesome. Great. So we'll, we'll go ahead and include that link in the show notes. Thanks again. It's. You know, I think you're officially my guest. My. What would be the term? My. The. The furthest away. I've interviewed anybody from Atlanta to New Zealand. That is. That's pretty remarkable. Different hemisphere too.

And probably the person that you've known the longest, maybe as well.

I think you might be right. So, Sean, thanks again. It was great to have you.

It's. It was a pleasure.

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