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Angie,

One of the best questions to ask a client is -

"What problems do you most want to solve?"

Sit back and take lots of notes - they'll usually talk for hours.

And then you explain how and why you have the right answers.


Steve


P.S. If the "selling yourself" bit is a little difficult.

Just concentrate on selling "copywriting" and how it'll significantly help the client.

They'll see that you know what you're talking about and you'll automatically be "selling yourself" - without having to (if that makes sense...)

Hello Angie

Selling yourself is all part of the package of being a copywriter. If you're not comfortable selling yourself this could just be a little bit of low self esteem going on. Or, a little too much modesty. Every copywriter needs to be fantastic at marketing themselves. If you cannot market yourself effectively with total confidence, how can you market other people, their goods, products, and services?

Look, you're the expert at copywriting. There's no need to put yourself down or to hold yourself back from telling the world how great you are. You've got a valuable skill which 99.9% of the rest of the population haven't got the foggiest clue about. You need to put yourself out there at every opportunity.

The IM gurus, the only reason why they're referred to as 'gurus' (on top of imparting superb advice which fills a gap in the market) is because they're bloody good marketers. They're not ashamed to shout out to the rest of the world, "Here's who I am, this is what I do and this is what I can do for you and your business."

You've got to have or be prepared to acquire more self belief. If you cannot bring yourself to believe how great you are, this will come shining through the rest of the wording used in your marketing efforts.

Suggestion...

Find a high cliff, no, don't jump. Stand 20' back from the edge of the cliff edge and scream your lungs out for 30 minutes. I mean really let rip. You'll find this to be quite an uplifting experience. I mean it. Just do it. Try it out.

I want you to stand in the middle of nowhere where nobody can hear you, where there's no need for you to feel self conscious and I want you to use the full power of your lungs to shout at the top of your voice just how great you are. "I AM THE WORLDS BEST COPYWRITER."

"I DESERVE NOTHING BUT THE BEST IN LIFE BECAUSE I'M BLOODY BRILLIANT AT WHAT I DO."

Write down half a dozen phrases of personal importance to yourself, phrases which are relevant to your personality. Whatever the self doubt is, write down it's opposite number. Defy your own logic by force even if you feel that what you're writing down is not true of yourself.

Now go do some shouting at the top of your voice. And I don't mean just an ordinary shout, I want you to really work yourself up into a veritable frenzy. Give it some rip girl. Go for it.

Surprisingly enough, on top of feeling as daft as a brush you'll also feel at the end of the 30 minute session quite invigorated. Empowered even. You'll feel a sense of release of old self limiting thought patterns. Your brain will be tuned to accept new patterns of belief in your own abilities. You'll be primed to accept new personal challenges. And ready to take on the world. And yourself.

You Angie are as good if not better than the next wo/man in the street. Self limiting thought patterns are just that. Thought patterns. And if you don't like a thought pattern or one keeps entering your mind via the pineal gland, kill it right there and then. Tell it to piss off or whatever word you need to use to tell it to go away. And replace the negative thought with a more positive affirmation.

You've got to reinforce good feelings about yourself to have total self confidence in your own abilities to deliver your skill package to the rest of the world and not be ashamed to tell everyone else just how great you really are.

Now, as regards the copywriting questionnaire...

I'll send you mine by pm and you can rephrase each of the questions to your own liking.

I hope this advice was helpful to you.

Warmest regards,


Mark Andrews

I forgot your in San Francisco. Then...

...drive over the bridge and at the end, turn left up the hill towards the old army camp at the top of the headland.

Halfway up that hill is a pull in where you can park the car overlooking the bridge with SF in the background. I know, I've parked there myself in the past. It's as good a place as any to give your voice a bit of welly.

Or, carry on to the top of the road and there's a gravel car park there overlooking the Pacific Ocean on top of the cliff. Another good spot.

I might be about 5,000 miles away but I've got a bloody good memory.

Just take your business one step at a time. You can't hope to do everything overnight. I've been self employed for over 30 years and every day is still a new learning experience. Just enjoy the journey. Self employment shouldn't be a chore, every day will always present new challenges - just take it all in your stride and break the entire processes involved of running your own business down into easy steps.

If you break tasks down into little steps, you'll find everything becoming a lot easier to manage and you can congratulate yourself on each step accomplished.

Kindest regards,


Mark Andrews

Ask how s/he is tracking his/her current ad response rate Steve.

Many business owners won't even stop to consider whether or not their ads are converting and from where their customers are actually coming from.

You might bring him/her on side by offering to do a split test with him/her. S/he uses one of his ordinary advertisements whilst you on the other hand provide him/her with a direct response advertisement free of charge at this stage. An advertisement which can be tracked to see precisely from where these customers are actually coming from.

S/he then drives an equal amount of traffic to both offers the test being, which one is going to convert better? Which one generates the most profit and by what percentage difference in a precise timeframe?

Assuming yours is the clear cut winner Steve by a good margin, you can then pitch him/her again. If he still refuses to listen, dump him/her and move on to your next prospect.

If on the other hand s/he does listen to your commonsense approach knowing it's now in his/her personal interest to take your advice on board because at the end of the day you're going to put more profit his/her way, then you can reel him/her in on your elevated pricing plan to make up for time already spent trying to help him/her and for the 'insult' given not employing you in the first place.

Either way, just demonstrate that you can do better than anything else which s/he is currently bringing to the table. In other words, take direct action whether s/he likes it or not and prove to him/her that you do know precisely what you're talking about.

If s/he receives one hec of a lot more profit as a result of your direct action you can bet your bottom dollar s/he's going to start listening to you a lot more attentively in the future.

Best,


Mark Andrews

The best selling situations are those where the prospect already knows he wants the product or service. In those cases, it's simply a matter of communicating why you should be the provider.

There are tons of prospects who already know, so ignore the rest and go after them.

If you're not currently drawing prospects to your service, it's a positioning problem.

VL

I'll jump in here Steve, since Mark is not logged in.

By asking ad performance questions on their existing ones,
you get to see if they are actually measuring them.

You can tell stories of others who "knew" were getting great results,
but when proper measurements were put in place, they were crap.

Just keep probing deeper to see what's really going on,
without antaganizing the critter, because he will sense that you really know what you are talking about.

Keep dropping case studies of results.

Things like, a 1 letter change to a headline increased sales by 200%...
A change in the order button increased sales by 25% within 3 days,
at no cost...

A split test change in a order button increased sales by 157%, no cost to implement.

Drooping little nuggets like them really does work.

I did it last week in a face to face meeting.

The guy couldn't take it any more...he offered me 50% profit share
in a region and a share in overall division sales.

He was growth motivated, not all decision makers are though.

Best,
Ewen

P.S. Huh, Mark did beat me!