What to Look For About You Prospects

That Will Strengthen Your Sales-Copy

The simple answer is that you have to find the pain common to most of your prospects. You get at this pain by skillfully asking questions that help your prospects open up and reveal it to you. And yes, you have to listen well; otherwise you'll miss it.

The legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz has a better answer. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, he tells us that our advertising success depends on understanding “the forces that create the public spread of a private want, o

It's true. I found that a set of good questions about your prospect will uncover the revealing insights that you need to craft powerful sales copy. Yet these types of questions are hard to find. Few marketers even know what they are. The best marketers know them through sensitivity, instinct and intuition — a kind of knowledge and sensing that’s hard to put in writing.

I had to search deep and wide to uncover these good questions. Since they're critical to successful sales-copy, the search was well worth it. Knowing the right questions to ask focuses your attention on what matters most in your prospects' real-world experience. Such specific information will give your sales-copy the “feeling that impels your readers to act as you want them.”

I've found a lot of advice about how important it is to start with good information to make sure your sales-copy compels your readers to act. And I found a general understanding of what sort of information you want about your prospect before you craft your sales-copy. These popular answers are helpful only to a point. These are the easy answers. But after searching several years for the right answers, I've finally found the questions that'll make the difference in your sales-copy.

Before I get to the questions, let me tell you why they're so important and what you should be looking for when you ask them.

Why Finding the Right Information About

Your Prospect Makes A Difference

These questions are critical because the most important part of your sales-copy is your customer. The respected copywriter Michele Fortier, in his article How to Get Your Perfect Customer tells you that, “[the] most important part of your copy is not your headline, not your offer and certainly not your benefits. The most important part is your customer.”

And to get the important information about your customers, he advises you to talk to your customers in depth. You need good qualitative and quantitative information around these four areas:

- Geographics

- Demographics

- Psychographics

- Technographics

The idea, he tells you, is to find out why your customers are buying from you so that you know what type of prospects your sales-copy should be targeting.

Fortier tells you in general that it's important to get lots of information about the prospect, but he doesn't tell you what exactly you should be paying attention to. For instance, he suggests you should find out information like:

• Who, exactly, is your perfect customer?

• What’s a day in the life of your perfect customer like?

• Why did they buy your product? If not, why not?

Even if you're able to gather this type of information about your prospects, this still doesn't get you what you need. It still leaves you asking, what in your information will help you write effective sales-copy?

For instance:

• What lies behind your perfect customers and what drives them in their real-world experience to make them your perfect customer?

• What is it about the life of your perfect customers that helps you write better sales-copy?

• What is it about the reason why your customers bought or didn’t buy from you that helps you sell to others?

What to Look For About You Prospects

That Will Strengthen Your Sales-Copy

The simple answer is that you have to find the pain common to most of your prospects. You get at this pain by skillfully asking questions that help your prospects open up and reveal it to you. And yes, you have to listen well; otherwise you'll miss it.

The legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz has a better answer. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, he tells us that our advertising success depends on understanding “the forces that create the public spread of a private want, or

I've found a lot of advice about how important it is to start with good information to make sure your sales-copy compels your readers to act. And I found a general understanding of what sort of information you want about your prospect before you craft your sales-copy. These popular answers are helpful only to a point. These are the easy answers. But after searching several years for the right answers, I've finally found the questions that'll make the difference in your sales-copy.

Before I get to the questions, let me tell you why they're so important and what you should be looking for when you ask them.

Why Finding the Right Information About

Your Prospect Makes A Difference

These questions are critical because the most important part of your sales-copy is your customer. The respected copywriter Michele Fortier, in his article How to Get Your Perfect Customer tells you that, “[the] most important part of your copy is not your headline, not your offer and certainly not your benefits. The most important part is your customer.”

And to get the important information about your customers, he advises you to talk to your customers in depth. You need good qualitative and quantitative information around these four areas:

- Geographics

- Demographics

- Psychographics

- Technographics

The idea, he tells you, is to find out why your customers are buying from you so that you know what type of prospects your sales-copy should be targeting.

Fortier tells you in general that it's important to get lots of information about the prospect, but he doesn't tell you what exactly you should be paying attention to. For instance, he suggests you should find out information like:

• Who, exactly, is your perfect customer?

• What’s a day in the life of your perfect customer like?

• Why did they buy your product? If not, why not?

Even if you're able to gather this type of information about your prospects, this still doesn't get you what you need. It still leaves you asking, what in your information will help you write effective sales-copy?

For instance:

• What lies behind your perfect customers and what drives them in their real-world experience to make them your perfect customer?

• What is it about the life of your perfect customers that helps you write better sales-copy?

• What is it about the reason why your customers bought or didn’t buy from you that helps you sell to others?

What to Look For About You Prospects

That Will Strengthen Your Sales-Copy

The simple answer is that you have to find the pain common to most of your prospects. You get at this pain by skillfully asking questions that help your prospects open up and reveal it to you. And yes, you have to listen well; otherwise you'll miss it.

The legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz has a better answer. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, he tells us that our advertising success depends on understanding “the forces that create the public spread of a private want, o

And to get the important information about your customers, he advises you to talk to your customers in depth. You need good qualitative and quantitative information around these four areas:

- Geographics

- Demographics

- Psychographics

- Technographics

The idea, he tells you, is to find out why your customers are buying from you so that you know what type of prospects your sales-copy should be targeting.

Fortier tells you in general that it's important to get lots of information about the prospect, but he doesn't tell you what exactly you should be paying attention to. For instance, he suggests you should find out information like:

• Who, exactly, is your perfect customer?

• What’s a day in the life of your perfect customer like?

• Why did they buy your product? If not, why not?

Even if you're able to gather this type of information about your prospects, this still doesn't get you what you need. It still leaves you asking, what in your information will help you write effective sales-copy?

For instance:

• What lies behind your perfect customers and what drives them in their real-world experience to make them your perfect customer?

• What is it about the life of your perfect customers that helps you write better sales-copy?

• What is it about the reason why your customers bought or didn’t buy from you that helps you sell to others?

What to Look For About You Prospects

That Will Strengthen Your Sales-Copy

The simple answer is that you have to find the pain common to most of your prospects. You get at this pain by skillfully asking questions that help your prospects open up and reveal it to you. And yes, you have to listen well; otherwise you'll miss it.

The legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz has a better answer. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, he tells us that our advertising success depends on understanding “the forces that create the public spread of a private want, o

• Who, exactly, is your perfect customer?

• What’s a day in the life of your perfect customer like?

• Why did they buy your product? If not, why not?

Even if you're able to gather this type of information about your prospects, this still doesn't get you what you need. It still leaves you asking, what in your information will help you write effective sales-copy?

For instance:

• What lies behind your perfect customers and what drives them in their real-world experience to make them your perfect customer?

• What is it about the life of your perfect customers that helps you write better sales-copy?

• What is it about the reason why your customers bought or didn’t buy from you that helps you sell to others?

What to Look For About You Prospects

That Will Strengthen Your Sales-Copy

The simple answer is that you have to find the pain common to most of your prospects. You get at this pain by skillfully asking questions that help your prospects open up and reveal it to you. And yes, you have to listen well; otherwise you'll miss it.

The legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz has a better answer. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, he tells us that our advertising success depends on understanding “the forces that create the public spread of a private want, o

What to Look For About You Prospects

That Will Strengthen Your Sales-Copy

The simple answer is that you have to find the pain common to most of your prospects. You get at this pain by skillfully asking questions that help your prospects open up and reveal it to you. And yes, you have to listen well; otherwise you'll miss it.

The legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz has a better answer. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, he tells us that our advertising success depends on understanding “the forces that create the public spread of a private want, or mass desire.” We uncover these forces from the way people are wired — their instincts, intuitions, or from a mass technological problem your prospects are facing. We also uncover these strong forces in the “winds of change”.

How do you get at these forces?

First, by studying these mass instincts. You need to know how these mass instincts get transformed into strong mass desires. And depending on your product and service, you also need “sensitivity, foresight, intuition to see and catch the rising tide [of the straws in the wind] when it's almost imperceptible.”

How do you know the instincts that become forces creating this mass desire? Or how do you raise your level of sensitivity, foresight or intuition so that you'll perceive and interpret the rising tide when it's almost imperceptible?

This, he doesn't tell us. Few are able to tell us.

But this doesn't mean no one has told us. I was able to find answers from an English researcher, Andrew Basden PhD, who is working on, among other things, artificial intelligence systems. His answers will help you better explain how your prospects are wired. Now you can see for yourself if his answers will add power to your sales-copy.

The Questions That Will Identify

the Forces That Define Your Market

With Basden’s answers, I was able to formulate a few good specific questions that will help you quickly find the forces that create the mass desires that define your market. When you ask the right questions, your mind will know what to look for. You'll then uncover the revealing insights about your customers that you need for breakthrough sales-copy.

When you ask these questions, keep in mind that these desires are a result of how your prospects function in their everyday experience, and how they seek meaning in those functions. When you look at how they function in the various aspects of their lives, you'll find your prospects have all kinds of strong desires.

You need an accurate reading of their situation in order to discover their strongest desires at specific times. These are the desires you need to tap into.

The opportunity for you comes when your prospects feel they're severely hampered from satisfying their strong desires. The tension between what they naturally desire because of how they function, the way they distort these desires and their inability to satisfy them causes the forces that drive and define your market. If your prospects feel the tension badly enough, and you're able to satisfy their desire, they'll commit readily to knowing about what you have to offer them. And they'll ask for the sale … all on their own.

These questions will help you accurately read the situations in which your prospect functions and their specific desires. Find the tensions in these desires, and you'll find revealing insights about your prospect for breakthrough sales-copy:

• Do your prospects desire to powerfully master, control, create, or transform a thing, process or situation?

• Do your prospects desire to communicate meaningfully and deliberately with any type of symbols — either with others or to express themselves or clarify their though