by Paul Edwards
CHAPTER 6
Frequency
(Persuasion in Print)
Effective business communicators make use of our self-disclosing age. It’s much more difficult to resist buying when we’re already on record as wanting something. You add good, persuasive writing to the mix … and you have a recipe for success.
The good news: as with public speaking, it doesn’t take an English degree or the poetic brilliance of William Shakespeare to write an evocative and engaging message. You’ll need to know a few Shakespearean principles, though. I’d be willing to bet money that The Bard knew what I’m about to share.
I try to draw on mistakes as a means of passing on my knowledge, using difficult emails from my insurance years. In many scenarios, what failed me was going too fast and shallow. I neglected to apply rules I already knew.
In my first insurance job, I worked for a demanding employer. Duties included working every other Saturday to try and set extra appointments and close extra sales. Even though he wasn’t physically in the office, the agent would send emails to check on progress. I never felt I could offer a satisfactory explanation, so I’d reply to these messages with “Okay,” signaling compliance with his demands but not providing details.
After some rounds of this, my troubles compounded. He became upset that I only replied “Okay.” I decided to keep a scratch notepad on my desk to record call volume with tick marks. The next time he wrote to check on me, I replied: “50 phone calls, 10 connections, seven rejections, two possibles, and one appointment set.”
This worked perfectly. He replied, “Keep at it, you’ll find something eventually.” It was a “just the facts” conversation with a driven, Type-A personality. I had to re-learn to answer in the language the audience understood and appreciated. Most people reading this story side with me, resenting such a level of micro-management. I use it to illustrate how I failed to employ a cardinal rule I already knew from being a Pacific Lutheran University Communication major - “Know your audience.”
In this case, my “audience” was the agent. I should have known he’d want concrete details and numbers to satisfy his itch for progress. I especially should have known that after about two or three months on the job, but this story happened much later, closer to being on the job about eight or nine months. Replying “Ok” was the last thing I should have done. It took about four or five rounds of confrontation before I finally recognized the problem and changed my response.
Know Your Audience
My communication professors at PLU drilled the importance of audience relentlessly. “What use is this to your reader?” they’d scoff. “How are you telling them what you said you were going to tell them?” After one too many rejected papers, I finally caught on: I was writing a diary or journal instead of an essay or press release. I dictated my content instead of crafting it.
In social settings, people are thoughtful and careful with what they say or don’t say. They read body language, they intuit personality with emotional intelligence, and choose their words accordingly. For some reason, when it comes to writing, most people drop all tact and intuition. They take little thought regarding how messages will be interpreted. I don’t mean they all turn into rude jerks; they just lose firepower and panache they wield in-person, by reducing messages to plain, bloodless language.
Bland responses can be as risky as writing something someone could use against you in a lawsuit. Moreover, I think we diminish our potency in the process. People get lazy when they address others with a pen or keyboard. For some reason, with written communication, the humanity on the receiving end gets obscured.
Radically Generous Entrepreneurs enjoy effective written communication, mostly because you get way more chances to muck things up before transmission. Provided you use those chances, of course, you can become very productive in print. A Radically Generous Entrepreneur will make use of whatever time they’re afforded to thoughtfully craft a message. It’s preferable to banging out a response on the keyboard and firing off without consideration of how it will be received.
When you meet a Radically Generous Entrepreneur in print, there’s a good chance you’ll feel as if you can “hear” the sincerity, selflessness and calm reassurance in the words. You’ll feel less slighted, ignored or tolerated; whatever else they do, Radically Generous Entrepreneurs don’t communicate thoughtlessly. If it’s too detailed to discuss in print, you’ll often find these people asking to schedule a phone call or video chat. As you’ll see below, they also make heavy use of “checklists” in their writing … because what gets checked, gets done.
Joe LoGalbo
An unassuming gent with the pronounced features of a Gaelic war chieftain, Joe LoGalbo became a great copywriting mentor. In addition to his fitness brand, Joe runs his own copywriting agency and devotes a huge portion of his time to mentoring all of Vince Del Monte’s students as writers.
If you aren’t in the copywriting business, you might think I make too much of the written word. We all know “how much of what is written actually gets read.” To which I would remind you, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and “The writing is on the wall.” Ignore this, therefore, at your own risk; with “a little sleep and folding of the hands to rest, poverty comes upon (the entrepreneur) like a bandit.” (Proverbs 24:33, NIV, italicized words mine).
Of everything Joe taught me, creating a writer’s “checklist” was the simplest and most effective tool. Like Luis Diaz’s podcast checklist, these make it difficult to write poorly, if you follow the blueprint. Sales copy is recreational by nature, yet you must also adhere to certain foundational elements. If not, your message will crumble at worst and at best it will leave significant amounts of money on the table.
This isn’t to encourage you to pursue a career writing sales copy. It’s to get you to think like a copywriter when you communicate in print. You know how Jesus used farming analogies to describe spiritual realities? Top copywriters know how to “enter the conversation the consumer is already having in their mind.” That’s the secret sauce that has people posting on Facebook, “I merely thought about a vacation to France and the next ad that popped up in my newsfeed was advertising for vacations to France.” Vince Del Monte got me the same way; I already wondered why I’d trained so hard for so long with only extra body fat to show for it.
Joe applies this principle everywhere. He’s as determined to be thorough and detailed as the average person is to get writing done in a hurry. Effective copywriting always has in mind the priorities, wants and pain points of the reader, not the writer. By simply being systematic with a good list of tools, you can often “guess” where your audience is in pain or discomfort.
As for me, my lessons from PLU professors worked, but it took another decade or so for me to systematize them. Hence the need for Joe’s emphasis on checklists. Nowadays, you need to “catch” your audience at the time and place they’ll trade money for your product. You must forsake everything else in the name of the Journalist’s Five W’s – who, what, where, when, and why.
“Who” is maybe the simplest part – make the message about “you” (as in, the audience) and you have their attention. Write about yourself, Aunt Sally, or Uncle Bob or anyone else you don’t know if the audience cares about or not … and you’re wasting time and space. You may already assume they don’t care.
Dan Lok pointed out it’s also important to be specific about who “you” is. He has a brilliant illustration: if you’re walking down a busy street in a crowded city and you see someone you know, you have a much better chance of getting their attention if you call them out by name. If you just holler, “Hey you!” in the middle of Times Square … you can imagine how that will turn out.
“What” mainly signifies the solution, answer, satisfaction or feeling the audience seeks. If you’re going to communicate in print, you need to know what your audience is anxious, distressed or uncertain about. Don’t go straight for their aspirations. Start from the place of where th
ey are. My friend Ted Kallman, author of “The Nehemiah Effect,” borrowed an illustration from evangelism:
If you adhere to the idea of there being an absolute Truth (as we do), you still need to manage people at an individual level and from their perspective of ‘truth’ (understand and meet them where they are, not necessarily where they should be by your definition).
That brings us to “Where,” which for all its simplicity is one of the most forgotten parts of effective writing. Where do they go to get more information? Where can they sign up? Where is the meeting to be held? Where can they see an example of this? I deleted hundreds of my early posts trying to get people to act … because there was no “where.”
If you think “where” suffers from neglect you’ll be shocked to discover how little attention gets paid to “When,” which also has many applications. There’s still enough good sense out there to indicate “Order today!” or “Available right now!” That’s the “white noise” aspect of “when.” On social media we can even do live video and lock in orders in real time, just like a telethon. These, however, serve to obscure subtler meanings of “when.”
I refer to frequency when I talk about “when” - the question of “How frequently should I communicate with my audience?” There’s a natural subjective side to this, but let’s make a few general observations.
1)Barraging people with nonstop emails, texts, instant messages etcetera will brand you as something. It may not be the identity you want. Particularly if it becomes “The Brand Everyone Ignores.” Think of this the context of “Business Beyond Business.” Is that how you would expect us to operate?
2)Writing to people for the sake of “staying on their radar” is also hollow. I think so, anyway; I gave some thought to following Russell Brunson’s example of “Seinfeld” emails. I realized, however, there’s only so much to talk about before people figure out that you’re just taking up their time. You will brand yourself as something; it may not be the identity you want.
3)On the other hand, you could be waiting a long time if you’re the absolutist who never writes unless he has something earth-shaking to say. I think of the previous generations, now all but extinct, who wrote each other two or three times per year. Maybe once a month, if they had a profound friendship or relationship. That would be my sweet spot – but I’d employ modern journalism and copywriting to craft the message.
Would you agree with that “sub-list” for determining when to communicate? If so, you’re thinking like a Radically Generous Entrepreneur. As professionals, we need to remember there is at least more than one brain, one heart, and one soul involved in communication. It’s our job to attempt relating to our readers.
As there’s no use in being a lawyer with knowledge of the law’s letter, but ignorance of its spirit - so can one be an excellent grammarian and a terrible communicator. I’d rather work with a bad speller who knows what his audience wants to read than an excellent one who doesn’t. I’ve read many a message and thought, “Well, there’s a few minutes of my life I can never get back.”
Here’s the checklist I use for written communication:
• Who are you addressing? What are their demographics, commonalities?
• What are their frustrations and fears?
• What are their wants and aspirations?
• Is what you write entertaining as well as educating?
• Is what you write personalized? Do you invite the reader into your world, if only briefly?
• Will you take time to read this aloud to yourself? How does it sound when you read it?
This Is How We Do It
Joe also taught me the importance of creating memorable “mechanisms” to help audiences make connections when they read messages.
On the sales page of my original book, “10 Secrets to Networking Success,” we used examples of this. Specifically, I used the acronym “R.O.N” (Return on Networking) to help people visualize a system or device. This is simple enough to imagine, yet it implies sophistication and high-level knowledge on a subject.
Professionals engaged in any form of writing should make use of mechanisms to help people grasp things. You’re already a product of this, though you may not have given it much thought. Have you ever come close to (or received) a free pizza from Domino’s because it took more than 30 minutes to get to your door? You responded to their mechanism – “Delivered fresh to your door in 30 minutes or less.”
Have you had a hamburger “Your way, right away,” or rented a car because they said, “We’ll pick you up”? Burger King and Enterprise Rent-A-Car have mechanisms too. It’s their way of saying “This is how we do what we do, differently.”
You can’t always have a mechanism, especially in ongoing correspondence. But when crafting a message when you have an intended outcome – in other words, when you want to persuade someone to do something – mechanisms can be useful.
Calls to Action
Joe also believes persuasive messages always give the recipient homework. It might be something as simple as opting-in for an email list, subscribing to a podcast or answering “Yes or No” in a poll. If the object of the game is to get a response, a wordy memo of your thoughts without a specific call to action isn’t going to cut the mustard.
“Depending on the length of the message, you probably want to include at least two or more calls to action,” Joe told me. “Be very specific about what you want them to do, and don’t ask them to do four or five things at once. Just one task at a time.”
Again, don’t misinterpret this as copywriter coaching. We’re talking about a transferable habit that will get you better results on average. Whatever kind of message we send, we’re asking for a response from the recipient. Remember the importance of “baby steps” in how big of an action we ask them to take.
For example, don’t say, “Click the link below, then subscribe, then like, then leave a comment and then check out the description box on my latest YouTube video.” Break those actions up into bite-size amounts. Your audience follows one step, then another, and then another.
When “No” Doesn’t Have to Mean “No”
Jayson Gaignard said the same thing about email. If you must use it, he suggested breaking up messages for busy professionals in balance with all their other responsibilities. If you do this, you can sometimes even get a “no” response to your request, but still convert it into a “yes.”
Let’s say you’re trying to nail down an interview, like I do. This is where you can use the Journalist’s Five W’s and bite-size pieces. You don’t want to be so vague that the recipient deletes the message. Jason Feifer, editor of Entrepreneur magazine, posted a photo of an email that did this exactly the wrong way on Instagram. The text read: “Dear Jason, I’d like to write articles for you. Who do I speak to?” Jason correctly disparaged this kind of message because it’s almost a verbatim copy of what he receives from hundreds of people every day. How is he supposed to make any decisions?
You want the reader to get enough detail to pique their interest, if it’s something you think would resonate. At the same time, you want to guide them through layers of detail – to qualify them, rather like a sales prospect. If I were trying to interview Jason, it might look something like this:
Dear Jason,
I listened to your recent podcast episode about novels. It was hilarious, entertaining, and informative. I think the angle of “Pessimists’ Archive” is a fantastic way of sharing your thoughts with your audience. (Remember, with influencers, tell them how much their work means to you.)
I would love for my audience of Radically Generous Entrepreneurs on the Influencer Networking Secrets Podcast to hear how your mind works. Would you be open to a 30-minute Zoom or Skype interview?
Sincerely,
Paul Edwards
Do you see how little thinking Jason needs to do when he reads this? The first paragraph just lets him know – “Your hard work is paying off. Someone’s listening. They appreciate what
you say. You’re making your point well. Bravo.”
The second paragraph respects Jason’s time: “Here’s an opening for you to form a bond with more people who are in your target demographic for readership and advertising revenue. You don’t need to leave your office, come up with questions, arrange for engineers or anything; all you need to do is show up and talk. Interested?”
We’ve now covered “who,” “what”, “where” and some of “why.” The only remaining details are “when” and the subtler details of “why” that Jason may ask in follow-up conversations. Now, if he replies to this and says, “Yes,” I can proceed with those other details. If he replies with “No,” I can respond, “No worries. Out of curiosity, though … under what circumstances would you say ‘yes’?”
This still might not do any good. It could be the head of an operation like Entrepreneur simply doesn’t do interviews below a certain level. He might not be hungry for publicity. Suppose, however, that I sent this same message to someone just getting started with their business publication? Suppose I sent it to someone rising through the ranks, seeking many interviews as they could get? Suppose you sent it to a Radically Generous Entrepreneur?
In fact, that’s just what I did. Vince Del Monte’s mastermind group scheduled their May 2019 meetup in Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s a mere half-day’s drive from my house. With some caution, I began reaching out to my closest friends and acquaintances in the group, one by one:
“Hey. Are you coming to Vancouver in May?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
“I’m thinking of setting up a mastermind dinner. Interested?”
“Absolutely!”
“Great! I’ll keep you posted.”
That’s it. You see how it works? Bite-size pieces. Not too much to think about. Busy entrepreneurs can answer questions like these in their spare moments. If you want to know what their faces look like when you “overdo it” with your messages, just try putting that all back into one paragraph:
