The Land Deal: Turning a Mole Hill into a Mountain

April 21, 2008

*** Why Prospects “Lie”

*** “The Question” and One Way to Answer It

*** What Clients Really Want

— Special Offer —

The rumors are true…

There IS a lot of money to be made as a freelance copywriter. But the folks spreading the rumors probably aren’t going to be the ones to pay you the big dollars.

But there are plenty of other clients who will. You just have to find them…

Here’s how… click here

———————

Dear Copywriter,

It cost me about $.87 on Google AdWords to get the phone call from my prospect in the land business. We’ll call him LS…

“I’m looking for someone to help me get my website going. I need someone to rewrite it so that it makes sense.”

That’s how the whole adventure began.

That “adventure” is how an investment of $.87 turned into a $1,000 project and then into a $14,000 project + 5% commission. (We’re talking about 5% on high ticket items here–anywhere
between $10,000 and $250,000.)

Funny thing is, it all began with my prospect telling a “lie.”

Why Prospects “Lie”

In my experience, here’s a shortlist of why prospects “lie.” I’m not saying they do it intentionally (although some probably do), but the end result is the same either way. You don’t get the truth.

So here are three reasons why prospects might “lie” to you:

1. They don’t know you.
2. They don’t trust you.
3. They don’t know enough to understand what the truth is.

In LS’s case, he didn’t know enough to ask for what he wanted.

He was just trying to find someone to rewrite his website. He explained to me that he knew the internet was going to be a powerful way to expand his business, but his current results were nonexistent. His website was just sitting there.

So he asked me for a quote. How much would it cost to redo it?

I said… “What does redo it mean to you?”

He said, “I mean rewrite it.”

“What makes you think that’s going to make any difference?” I asked…

He didn’t have a good answer.

And that’s how it began. With QUESTIONS.

The answers to those questions are what you turn into gold. In this case, LS’s answers to my questions gave me a good idea about how to proceed.

The thing is, he needed to understand just how much money he was leaving on the table (millions) and get some sort of clear plan for how to reclaim some of it.

I offered to show him how to do it in the form of a “Marketing
Plan.”

He paid $875 for the Marketing Plan I created.

He wanted that for f*ree… so that’s when he asked me… THE QUESTION.

“So why should I keep talking to you and not the other copywriters on my list?”

One Way to Answer “The Question”

I paused for a minute, and gave my answer: “I’m not sure that you should be talking to me.”

[This space left blank to represent the long pause where I bit my tongue hard enough to keep from making a stupid mistake by talking.]

Okay… well I’ll send the $875 via Paypal today.

And that’s how the whole thing got started.

After the “Marketing Plan” came the proposal to implement the Marketing Plan…

In the end, the project fee was $14,000 + $875 (for the Marketing Plan) + 5% of the new business I generated.

Here’s what I learned:

What Clients Really Want

The thing is, rewriting a website isn’t a high value project.

That’s what LS said he needed. But that’s not what I sell. And in the end, that’s not what he wanted either.

Here’s what he wanted:

1. He wanted to stop having to work so hard to turn prospects into clients.
2. He wanted to have some form of leverage in his business so that he didn’t have to be 100% responsible for every dollar that walked through the door.
3. He wanted a plan to ensure he wouldn’t have to run the business for the rest of his life in order to make money.

That’s what he bought. He bought the hope that I could create the systems to deliver those kinds of results.

If you think you’re just a copywriter, think again. That might be what you think you’re selling, but that’s probably not what your clients are buying.


Posted by Jason | Filed Under Blog 

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