"Learn to Sell or Else…"

* Republished from Nov. 2008, because… property markets might be looking a little more “up” these days, but… remember when? Enjoy…

While my wife and I were Stateside recently, we went to see a piece of property. Just for fun. As disclosed in the ad, the place in need of some tender loving care (TLC). But the neighborhood was right… and maybe, we thought, it would work as a rental property.

 So my wife got the broker on the phone. Sure, we could schedule a walk through, they said. Whenever. I’ll bet. After all, in many markets, real estate has seriously backpedaled from the boom of years past.

 Newly minted property brokers all over the U.S. got their licenses expecting to flip hundreds of properties a month. Instead, suddenly, they find themselves spending more time waiting for the phone to ring, and honing their skills in solitaire.

 ”Hi there!” said the agent, lighting up as we drove up to the property with two babies and my mother along for the ride.

 ”Listen,” she told us, “before we go in, I have to tell you that we’ve had at least 50 people see this place in the last 20 days… it’s going to move fast. I just wanted to warn you.”

 Ah yes, I thought, create urgency. She’s off to a running start. But given what we were about to see, it might as well have been a sprint into the Grand Canyon.

 ”It’s been empty for awhile.”

 No kidding. The wafting sent of rotting carpet was unmistakable. The curious brown stains on the walls, on the other hand, I couldn’t place. And I’m not sure I’d want to, either.

“Sorry about the cold,” said the agent, “the utilities were turned off when the previous owners vacated the property about a year ago.”

 ”Wait,” said my wife, “is that an abandoned car out back in the driveway? It looks like it’s jammed with junk.”

 ”And this container of cream in the fridge…” I said, as I peeled the carton from a puddle of black muck that held it to the glass shelf, “does that expiration date really say ‘JULY 2005?’”

 ”Um…” said the agent, “yes, well, I’ll have to look into it a little more for you. I only know attorneys are handling the sale. I think it’s a question of mental unsoundness.”

 Yeah, I thought, maybe the prior resident went nuts after the poltergeists put up this wallpaper. In one room after another, it became clear. The place was a dump. Had Charles Manson and friends been looking for a hideaway, they would have filed this one under “too spooky” to take up residence.

 ”It’s really priced to sell,” said the agent, clinging to her chipper-ness as best she could. “They’re looking for a cash deal.”

 ”Mind if we go see the bodies… er, I mean… the basement first?” said my wife. “Sure,” said the broker, looking for the door heading downstairs. It was clear she, too, had spent as little time in this place as possible.

 The best selling point was, perhaps, how easy it was to get the front door open again so we could step outside.

 ”They’re looking to do this quickly, without all the contingencies. You know, like a house inspection and stuff.”

 I took a glimpse at one of the windowsills on the outside of the back porch. It was half-eaten by termites.

 ”So,” I said, “just in general terms… how’s the market around here lately? Moving fast?”

 ”Oh, the slowdown isn’t really hitting us at all,” she said. “We’re seeing demand and prices still going up.”

 ”Yeah? Interesting. I’m writing a promo right now for a financial advisor who’s looking at the real estate bust… so I’m seeing lots of these stats myself… how do sales this past year compare, number-wise, with the year prior.”

 ”I’d have to email those numbers to you,” she said. And less than an hour after we bid our goodbyes, she did. “Here you go…” said her email, “…and it looks like 2006 was even better than 2005!”

 Really?

 My father, a semi-retired attorney, had a different set of trend figures from a real estate agent he’d helped out some years ago. Out of seven or eight zip codes, only one saw a 1% increase in property prices in 2006. Another stayed flat. The rest had plunged by 11%… 20%… even as much as 29%.

 And here’s the funny thing.

 The ghost house alone was enough to convince us something had turned sour in the property market. But what is it that really sticks in my craw now, a week or so later?

 The reflex clichés, the lack of key information, and the wobbly statistics coughed up by the market-challenged sales agent.

 I couldn’t help thinking… there IS a way to sell that property. But this wasn’t it. Re-price it for the market and to reflect the condition of the place. And then, heaven forbid, educate the broker to sell it for what it is — weakness, warts, and well-buried merits combined.

 Could you imagine if everybody sold that way?

Your new sales goal:  To make your prospect’s blood gush with “oxytocin.”
 What is oxytocin?
 An article in the New York Times reported on recent “neuroeconomic” research from top U.S. institutions.  (Princeton and a few other places.) So before I explain oxytocin, let’s take a crack at explaining neuroeconomics first.
What “neuroeconomists” aim to do is pick apart the brain and see how its biochemistry influences buying behavior. In the first of the experiments reported in the article, here was the setup:
 Imagine you have $10 in hand. Your responsibility is to convince another participant in the experiment to take all or some of your money. In any dollar increment you offer. Sounds easy?
Not so fast…
You have one chance to “sell” him on the amount you offer.  If the other participant (let’s call him the ‘prospect’) accepts, he keeps whatever amount he’s accepted.  And you get to keep whatever is left.
 (Example: You offer him $1.  If [...] Continue Reading…

A great piece of sales copy can show up where you’d least expect it. With an impact you might not expect either. At levels you never imagined. [...] Continue Reading…

“Shut up and listen,” I said. I was talking to Michael Masterson, the great copywriter, publisher, and best-selling author. Had I lost my mind? Not at all.

Rather, I was summing up the core idea behind one of the best-selling books of all time, Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” That, in my opinion, is the key idea behind that book. And the fact that it’s so easily defined has a lot to do with its success.

Michael came back with another example… I delivered a third… and the volley went back and forth, until we ran out of ready examples. It wasn’t a game. See, Michael and I — along with another brilliant copywriter, Bill Bonner — had just finished running four straight days of an intensive, private copywriting bootcamp…

[...] Continue Reading…

Interviewers will tell you, they hire based on qualifications… experience… results… and so on and so forth, blah blah, etc.

Says Richard Wiseman, in his book “59 Seconds…” they’re mostly kidding themselves. And he’s got 30 years of psychological research to back him up on this point… including a joint study by the University of Washington and the University of Florida.

Two researchers followed the job searches of over one hundred students, from the creation of their resumes and their lists of qualifications through to the content of their interviews, replete with follow up thorough interviews and questionnaires.

The same researchers then contacted the interviewers and quizzed them too. They noted everything from general impressions to job requirements, skill matching, and so on. And, of course, whether the interviewers expected to make a job offer.

What was the key?

Not past experience. Not school performance or other qualifications. Not even [...] Continue Reading…

“We must not be free because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”

- William Faulkner

My friend Paul Hollingshead is pretty smart fella.

He recently wrote a piece that shared the math on this career path we’ve chosen, direct response copywriting.

In case you don’t know how you got here — and some don’t — let’s backtrack a bit: copywriting means writing writing ad copy. The headlines. The print ads you see. Billboards. TV ads. And sales letters.

In the role that Paul and I and many others play, we’re talking most of all about the sales letters. Really long ones, that can range 8… 16… even 24 pages or longer.

These days, we’re talking more specifically about sales letters on the Internet. Usually posted to a website or read off in “video” form, with text on screen.

I’m almost sure you’ve seen these ads. Maybe you’ve [...] Continue Reading…

It’s embarrassing the number of I’ve times had to explain: “copywriting” and “copyrights” have next to nothing to do with each other.

Not embarrassing for me, mind you, but for the guy who asks me how to protect the draft of his novel about high school from plagiarists.

However, I’m not giving the whole story here, because the two terms — ‘copyright’ and ‘copywrite’ — actually DO have a little something in common.

Let me explain by way of a note sent to me some time ago by copywriter Brad Grindrod…

“When I’m writing a promotion, I’ve got a ton of material I’ve gathered to support the claims in my letter. But I’m just not sure if or how I can legally use it.”

First, some kudos for Brad.

Gathering a ton of research, in my opinion, is the right place to start. And not just for writing promo copy.

Magazine articles, novels, screenplays…

All benefit from [...] Continue Reading…

Quick — what do testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin all have in common? They’re the chemicals of “true love.” Yep, some jerk has reduced romance to a science… [...] Continue Reading…

I’ve gotten a few copy critiques in my day. I’ve given a few, too. And I’ve discovered there’s one essential element to making them effective: “ego butter.” Let me back up a bit, so I can explain by way of example… [...] Continue Reading…

There is no “Creativity Quotient” (C.Q.) test that measures how creative you are. But the same Scientific American research found that creative people often have similar character traits. Do any of these apply to you? [...] Continue Reading…