You're a good or even great salesperson, why not a great ad writer?

My answer is simply I am not as familiar with the media and how to maximize it.

People like to separate marketing and sales but they are two sides of the same coin so skills from one transfer well to the other. Sales merely is the interactive form while marketing is the static message form.

That said those of us who are good at selling are used to using that interaction to reach the final goal. In marketing we don't have that live interacting though you still have split testing and other methods to refine the message. That said we could visualize our target customers and role play the interaction in our mind to create the message for the marketing piece. And I am sure many of us doing that could create a marketing piece better than your average ad agency that focus on making it look great vs. making it sell. This is more true for those of us who have learned the basics of the marketing side of the coin.

Yet I know that others who have mastered that side of the coin could do it better. People like yourself who have truly mastered this side of our coin. While we could beat the average ad agency, due to their focus on design vs. selling, I know at least currently great copywriters and direct marketing guys could beat us on conversions. And in this game that is what really matters.

Now some of us may be underestimating ourselves. And I agree but I think being honest and humble builds more trust. I know I speak for myself (and some others who I won't name) when I say we would never claim to be an authority on something we are not. And while authority is always relative and in many case we do know more than the vast majority we would still defer to the true authorities on a subject.

The lack of n00bs claiming to be gurus is why this offline subforum is the best on WF. Much of the rest of the forum is full of newish marketers selling to other newish marketers. Each launching WSO after WSO and all seemly buying from each other. It is economy in microcosm. Yet no on really is making money at least not what I or many others on this offline forum would consider money worth our time.

A little bit of honesty and humility might seemly make the forum a better place but it would destroy the WF economy. And that economy is what allows us to have this great forum that none of us personally has to pay for. It is in essence paid for by those "gurus" who live in a kind of economic parasitic relationship with the other "gurus" of this site and the IM niche in general. So I guess we should thank those "gurus".

First; Another great post from You, and Aaron.

I think I will give this a shot. These are not precisely the same skills.

Personal selling can partly rely on personality, attitude, body language, charisma, and other factors that don't perfectly transfer to paper or other "Non-live" media.

I would guess that many great salespeople wouldn't know how to write a great sales letter. I certainly didn't have the skill before I started studying marketing. And even now, I'm a great salesperson but a mediocre copywriter.

When writing copy, you have to see everything from the prospect's point of view. You have to transfer emotion to language that the reader will then translate back into emotion. Copywriting is a far more complex skill than selling.

I've never met a copywriter that didn't have a deep understanding of selling (although many would never dream of actually doing a live pitch).

But I know very few accomplished sales people that could write a decent ad.

The two skills compliment and strengthen each other. Studying copywriting teaches you why your selling methods work, and gives you principles to create better sales methods. Selling brings the copywriting alive.

You can test, and even split test in selling, but it's exceedingly rare. When I was more active selling, I tested constantly and kept daily records of results, for a couple of decades. So testing was something I did,and it forced me to become effective. My selling skills evolved. But I never split tested, and wouldn't know how to do that in personal selling.

Copywriting takes intellectual powers that aren't as necessary in face to face selling. But combined, you get a formidable selling skill.

So there.

BTW I might be underestimating myself.....

I just read a free "ezine" from a person who is a professional copy writer (no one from here at least no one I know). And I must say it was so full of the worst "buy this" and "buy that" crap. Even the "content" that was sandwiched into the middle of this atrocity of bad upsells (which make "do you want fries with take" look like marketing gold) was nothing more than a rehash of common knowledge used as a "thinly" (aka not thinly) veiled attempt at selling his sales letter program. Reading it was a challenge of the highest order. I only continued because I was so in shock that a "professional" would put their name on this that I had to see when it would get better (Spoilers!: It didn't).

If this guy gets paid $5,000 to $10,000 to write sales letters (basically implied as much) I truly am missing my calling.

BTW since I used "Spoilers!"......

Before I morphed myself into a sales person, I used to run a personal training business, entirely dependent upon good copywriting and ad placement.

One of the ads I created generated over $200,000 in revenue over a 18 to 24 month period, until it puttered out. I created the whole thing myself; no swipes.

I will consider myself an okay copywriter, as all it is is salesmanship in print.

I had considered going into copywriting as a profession, but I couldn't figure out anywhere to start.

I intuitively know you have to be a specialist to really make the big bucks, really in any industry. From the outside, the industry seemed extremely competitive, and I didn't feel like I had any USPs to really differentiate myself. So I passed it up for life insurance, which suits my personality better nowadays (more controllable, activity-based with amount directly-connected with results).

I still have the copywriting bug, and at times, randomly write mock-ups and rough-drafts of postcards and letters I would love to test out in my marketplace, but I rarely ever do. The act of creating copy and employing it satisfies the more intellectual, analytical side of my personality, which is truthfully hard to get selling burial insurance to the salt of the earth, at times.

As normal Ewen there is this core group of us here that just brings so many ideas and thought to the surface. Lots of food for thought for all of us I hope. I know posting here with you guys makes me rethink and reconsider things. Thanks for posting it. I was thinking about this point during the other thread.

What would it take for one of us to flip to the other side. And how much of what we do is translatable into the other side?

Gets me thinking and makes me realize I often put up my own road blocks.

I think there are just those who are better in speaking than actually writing it down. When you write you need to consider grammar and it takes time to write down or type your thoughts. When you are speaking however, words flow freely.

This is just what I thought.

Not read the other responses yet, but when you're on a call or face to face you're getting constant feedback from the other person(s) about whether your current immediate approach is heading you in the right direction and you can change tack immediately as required, add in some humour to release some pressure, keep quiet and give them time to consider an reply, etc etc. depending on the specifics of the persons you are communicating with there and then. Ie before you communicate with them you already understand something about them from the way they are on the phone, was the phone answered by a PA, how is their tone, if face to face is the setting professional or relaxed, their dress sense, the current way of sitting/ talking etc all these are immediate clues you can use to formulate your next immediate communication.

With the written approach, you have no feedback, none, until they either click through to the next segment or click close to leave the page, or screw up the mailing piece hopefully into the recycling bins rather than rubbish. You have to 'get it right' for everyone that's reading it first time straight away else its in the bin.

So formulating something that speaks to many but also only speaks to each 'one' is a tougher proposition than communicating 1-1 and being able to adapt your approach immediately

I think the barrier, if there is a barrier, is in the common inability of most people to write in a way which confers the exact message they're seeing, hearing, feeling and reasoning in their heads. And so, their mind remains the only place that message exists.

Yeah I would say we are. What we choose to call it is merely semantics. Marketing is the other side of the coin to selling and I believe each can be viewed through the lens of the other. How connected they are and how much of the skills of one carry over to the other I'm not sure. But the more I step back and think I see the thinking process is similar. In selling I simply do it subconsciously while with marketing I have to bring it to the surface and actively think about it.

I will say that threads like this have got me thinking that having both sides of the coin will make you better at both.

They are two completely different skill sets using different forms of media.

Even comparing between the phone and face to to face a lot is different. What you read in books and forums doesn't translate well onto the phone because brevity is more important than giving an excellent answer in telephone sales. In my WSO and other sales courses teaches this important point, I've had some killer rebuttals that bowls the prospect over doing field sales, but the same lines and tactics simply don't make sense to use over the phone. It's more about your rhythm and tonality obviously looking at telephone sales.

Ads only create prospects good and bad, not customers.

What are you going to do when they call in about your advertisement? What I've found is that you need to be well rounded to be successful. Being good at one thing is not enough.