My OTHER secret weapon for getting copywriting clients

Hey Rainmaker, it’s Monday!

That means I’m going to dive in and answer YOUR questions in today’s email…

Remember — these Mailbox Monday issues rely on YOU to be awesome.  Send in your question to [email protected].

And remember, I’m happy to make your more “sensitive” questions anonymous, on request.  So if you’d like my answer but not with your name attached to it…  I’m happy to do that in the hope that my answer will help not just you, but others in your situation as well.

Today’s Mailbox Monday is a little different, as it actually came from a copywriting client of mine…

And in fact it didn’t come via my email inbox, but via a phone conversation I had with him.

Here’s what he said…

—

Roy, your article about how to find dream clients was good for most copywriters and most clients, but remember that’s not how you got me.

You should tell people how you convinced me to hire you the first time, because I think it would be helpful!

—

He’s right!  I forgot to reveal my OTHER secret weapon for getting copywriting clients…

So, that’s going to be the point of my email today.

It builds on what I told you last week, and has been a very important method for me to close deals with clients I’ve really wanted to connect with, but who haven’t gotten off the fence and hired me yet.

First, the immortal truth…

Some folks are incredibly hard to get to take action — even action they KNOW would be good for them!

With this particular client, I’d done all the right things.  We’d built a relationship.  He’d expressed interest in hiring me.

He even said he wanted to move forward.

But, it wasn’t happening.

He — like many business owners — is incredibly busy.

He has a million things going on in his business.

And, he had marketing that was already working.

There wasn’t a “bleeding neck” that demanded he take action right now.

And so no matter how many times I reconnected with him, and how many times I tried to close him, he wasn’t taking action.

He just wouldn’t give me a contract to do a first project with him.

I had something that was incredibly valuable to him, though…

I had BIG IDEAS that I thought would create BIG WINNERS for him!

I’d been following his business from the fringes for a while at that point.

I knew his market, and was following news relevant to them.

And in the course of that, I’d stumbled on a handful of news stories that I thought would make solid promotions for him.

And…

I’d even pitched them to him, as ideas he could either use or hire me to use.

(I’m usually not scared about them stealing them because 1. I try to have far more ideas than I will ever use, and 2. I present them with the undertone that I’m the only person that’s really going to be able to turn this idea into a powerful promotion.  Cocky?  Yeah.  True?  Mostly — and true enough that most clients eventually just hire me to do it.)

And yet, even though I’d pitched the ideas a couple times and tried to get him to take action on them, he just wouldn’t budge!

Here’s where I had an important realization about selling copywriting services…

And this is a realization I’d definitely had before, though it seems to be one I have to keep having over and over again when the time is finally right…

You can either spend a lot of time — weeks, months — following up to try to close the deal…

OR…

You can spend a lot of time right now and close the deal.

Both scenarios require a lot of time to close the deal.  The big difference?  In the first scenario, you spend weeks and months with agony and anticipation about a project that may or may not happen.  In the second scenario you spend weeks and months getting paid to do the project.

Front loading the effort in the sales process leads to getting paid faster (and moving on to more paying work sooner)!

With that in mind…

I said “Screw it, I’m just going to write the dang thing so he can see how great I am!”

NOTE: This process I’m describing does require you to embrace your ego a bit, and maybe even artificially bolster your confidence.  (I find that when I write in a vacuum — that is, I don’t consider feedback when I’m writing — that is a bit easier to do.)

So, instead of continuing to pitch ideas over and over again, I sat down and wrote a lead for this client.

I captured the big idea I wanted to base the promotion on, in copy form.

I spent a couple hours knocking out a rough draft of the first couple pages.

Then I came back a bit later and tweaked it a little bit, to make it shine a little brighter.

Then I sent it to this prospective client.

I told him…

“I will write this for you, but you’re going to have to pay me to do it.”

He had the first couple pages, but if he wanted complete copy he’d have to hire me to finish the project.

It was basically like writing a spec…

But he didn’t ask for it!  And I didn’t even tell him it was coming.

Yes, I’d already done the “relationship building” thing where I was on his radar.

But when he wasn’t taking action fast enough for me, I just showed him what I could do.

You already know how this ends…  I got the project!

In fact, I’ve made a lot of money with this client since then.  He’s made a lot.  I’ve made a lot.  And we both expect to continue making money together into the future.

If I had just decided I wanted to keep following up and keep following up, who knows what would have happened.

Maybe he would’ve bitten eventually, maybe not.

But because I took this initiative to close the sale…  Both of us are far better off for it today.

I do a lot less of this now…

In fact, today new clients come to me pretty much exclusively on reputation, or through these daily emails.

But I’m actually doing this in a new industry as we speak.

In fact, just before writing this email, I was drafting a video sales letter script for my local food bank.

As part of my move to do more stuff in the fundraising space, I’ve realized I need a few success stories out there.

And rather than wait around for folks to come to me, why not pull out my old wild card?

I’m going to hand them what’s basically a finished video to raise money for hungry kids in my community.

Could I eventually get them to come around to my style of copy with a long sales cycle, a ton of education, and building my presence in the market?  Maybe.

But if I hand them a video and ask them to share it on Facebook and see what kind of impact it makes, am I far more likely to get that success story I want?  Absolutely!

If this breakthrough is good enough for you, it better be good enough for me!

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr

Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets