Welcome to the 6th edition of The Essence!
The way you present your offer to prospects can make all the difference when it comes to selling.
If your offer looks like every other offer, potential clients will see it like every other offer. And that’s not good at all.
It means it’s not hard to look for another person for the job. So if a prospect wants a cheaper freelance writer, he won’t think twice about rejecting your offer. After all, your offer doesn’t entail anything special.
You want to make prospects want your offer. You can do so by making your offer more desirable. These five things will help you do so and compel prospects to buy your services.
1. Pack your offer with value
Value beats everything when it comes to selling. It will get you good testimonials, great referrals, and excellent word-of-mouth marketing.
Pack as much value as you can to your offer. Take my website review offer that I offer on my website for example.
You can also offer bonuses. For example, a checklist or anything that will be valuable to your potential clients.
2. Make the prospects want your offer
In her Copyblogger post about the vital elements of appealing copywriting offers, Sonia Simone wrote:
“It’s much easier to sell something people want than it is to sell something they need. We’re grudgingly pushed toward certain behaviors by our needs, but we’re pulled wildly by our wants.”
It all comes down to the rule excellent copywriter Gary Halbert mentioned in his popular Boron Letters: Sell people what they want to buy.
And if they don’t think they want to buy it, it’s your job to convince them otherwise. The key is to make your offer more desirable.
For example, you can show how you ranked a previous client on page one of a keyword in Google. Or show how their competitor’s newsletter is successful with bringing them customers. And that you could help them have the same level of success.
Be creative and put yourself in prospects’ shoes. Then ask yourself: What would make this offer so irresistible if I was the one being pitched?
When you combine both the need and the want in your offer, your prospects will find it irresistible. Do that and you will be able to sell your offer to prospects more effectively.
3. Offer the prospects what they want, when they want
In her article, Sonia Simone also wrote :
“Make sure your offer lines up with what your prospect is looking for today, not tomorrow or yesterday. You’ll make selling much, much easier.”
It’s all about the now. You don’t care much about food when you’re not hungry. So no tasty burger ad will compel you to order one. But when you’re really hungry, and the delicious burger ad shows up, it will be hard to resist. You want that burger and you want it now. It’s only a few touches away.
When you present your attractive offer to prospects when they want it, it will be as hard to resist as the CTA of that burger ad when you’re most hungry.
4. Add scarcity
When I was working as a telemarketer in a tourism company, our manager told us that when a prospect hangs up the phone without buying, you’ve lost him for good, at least most of the time.
So what did they tell us to do? Add scarcity. They didn’t say that exactly. But their tips were all drawn from the principle of scarcity.
Make the person on the other side of the phone feel like they’re losing something if they don’t get the product now. It was sketchy. But it sure was effective.
When selling your writing or copywriting services, you can add scarcity by:
Showing that you have only one limited spot for an extra client (if you actually do of course. Don’t lie)
Offering a limited-time opportunity: If you agree to work with me by Friday, you’ll have an article ready to publish on your site by Monday.
Be creative and think of ways you can add scarcity to your offer without going overboard.
5. Eliminate risks with a powerful satisfaction conviction
For a company or an entrepreneur to hire you to write for them, they’re risking time and resources.
Of course, this holds true to you as well. But prospects don’t care much about you. They want to be on the safe side. And after all, you’re the one pitching. So there has to be more risk on your side. You have to be the one willing to risk losing more time and resources.
For example, I offer a money-back guarantee to my clients. If they no longer want a project, I will pay them back the 50% they paid for it upfront.
Of course, I’m risking exploitation by offering this satisfaction conviction. But again, I have to be the one willing to take more risks. Besides, this shows that I'm confident in my abilities and that I care about my clients.
I came across this concept while reading Joe Sugarman’s Advertising Secrets of the Written Word. Joe brought up, as an example, the satisfaction conviction another Joe offered to sell his self-help book. The other Joe was Joe Karbo and his book, The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches. Joe Karbo offered his readers a 31 money-back guarantee, promising them not to deposit their checks or money orders until the period is over.
It was powerful, especially at that time—which was in 1973—and it helped excel the sales of his book to over three million copies.
That’s how effective a compelling satisfaction conviction is. Often, it’s this component in an offer that compels the prospect the most to buy.
By integrating those five things into your offer, and working hard to get your offer into your prospects’ eyes, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.
Until next time,
Mohammed