New Rules To Forging Positive Personal Relationships With Your Customers
Here is how you go about forging personal relationships:
- Adopt an intimate voice
- Include a photo of yourself
- Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes
- Show revelations
- Show your “Achilles Heel”
- Include your prospect in “your special group”
- Differentiate yourself from the enemy
Adopt an intimate voice. Well, if you want to evoke intimacy with your prospect, you’ll have to speak to him in a voice that’s honest and sincere. But that voice doesn’t necessarily have to be in the second person. In fact, it’s very often in the first or third person.
As I’ve mentioned before, we all have a natural selling voice. This is the voice we use to persuade friends, family and people who are close to us. When you can write a sales letter or sales page in this voice, you’ll have a powerful tool at your disposal since you’ll automatically be speaking with the power of intimacy.
Include a photo of yourself. This one is a simple but yet commonly overlooked way of establishing intimacy. To make your prospect more comfortable with you, show him who you are. Prove to him you’re a real, live person.
Try to choose images that are in line with your audience. If you’re prospecting affluent businessmen, you might select a picture of yourself in a suit wearing a confident grin. Likewise, if the “average guy” is your prospect, you probably want to dress more casually and assume a more modest demeanor.
Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. A powerful way to build trust with your prospect is to relate to the specific situation he’s in. If you’re writing to a middle-aged man, and you’re a middle-aged man, put it in your copy. Talk about what life is like at 50. Commiserate with his aches and pains. Dream with him about regaining his youthful physique. In other words, paint a picture that reminds him where he is and then take him where he wants to be.
If you find yourself never being in the same situation as your prospect, you can still put yourself in his shoes. Talk to a friend or family member, or survey other prospects and customers to find those that had the same experiences as your prospect. Then work those feelings, beliefs and desires into your copy. Your prospect will gravitate towards you as a result.
Show revelations. The more your prospect can “see” into you, the more he’ll trust you. Let’s say you’re buying a car. Would you buy one from a salesman that showed you a picture of his newborn baby and told you about the joys of fatherhood, or from the guy who never told you a thing about himself?
More than likely, you’ll pick the first salesman: the charismatic/intimate one. Why? Because since he revealed something about himself, he made you feel closer to him. This type of intimacy will have prospects thinking that he’s an “ok” guy, and made them feel that they could trust him.
Well, the same is true for direct-response copywriting. When your prospect opens your sales letter or email, chances are he has no idea who you are. So, your challenge is to get him to warm up to you and feel like he knows you – just like our salesman did. And the way you do that is by revealing small, personal details about yourself (revelations).
Show your “Achilles Heel”. If you’re writing copy for self-improvement products or services (e.g., diets, training courses, business opportunities), you should always reveal something labeled your “Achilles Heel.”
The reason for revealing your Achilles Heel in self-improvement copy is because your prospect has built-in insecurities. He might be insecure about his weight, or his intelligence, or his career. So you must prove to him that you don’t consider yourself to be better than he is. In fact, the more obvious it is that you’re smarter, richer or more attractive that he is, the more you must show your Achilles Heel.
So let’s say you’re writing a sales letter as Michael Jordan, you might tell the prospect how you were cut from your high school basketball team or you might reveal a moment in your life when you wondered whether you could really play good basketball.
If you were writing a promotion for weight-loss supplement, you might say something along the lines of, “I used to be so overweight that I cried when I looked at myself in the mirror.”
And if you were writing a business opportunity program, you could say, “I remember when I didn’t have enough money to buy groceries for my family. There I was at the checkout counter telling the cashier to take back each item one by one. I tried to ignore the snickering of those standing in line behind me, but it echoed all around me.”
In all of these scenarios you’ll notice that the writer proves he’s a real human being with insecurities and flaws just like the prospect.
Using the Achilles Heel also works at a deeper psychological level. When you reveal something embarrassing about yourself, you give the prospect a little power over you. He now knows one of the most upsetting moments in your life, and that puts him one up on you. Now, he can’t help but feel a certain closeness and intimacy toward you.
Include your prospect in “your special group.” Anytime you get the opportunity, include your prospect in a special group along with you. The group could be just about anything from fishermen to geopolitical thinkers to doctors and lawyers.
Once you’ve created a special group with your reader, you can forge an even stronger connection by placing that group in opposition with a common enemy…
Differentiate yourself from the enemy. What better way to “connect” with your prospect than to show him how everyone else is wrong – except for your special group?
For example, if you were writing to a hard-working average guy, you might set your group apart from the lazy, rich crowd. You could say something like, “We know how hard it is to make a buck today but not everyone does. Some people get it all handed to them on a silver platter.”
It’s you and him against these “other” people. You and him know what life’s really about. You and him have it all figured out. But not those rich people. They just don’t have a clue. This positioning transforms you into a special friend rather than just a salesperson.
Remember, intimacy is about caring for your prospect and building trust. We all look for trust and warmth in our personal relationships, in our business relationships and even in the direct-response advertising we’re exposed to everyday. So above and beyond all…
Love Your Customer
Before you sit down and write any sales copy, picture someone you truly love in your mind’s eye. It could be anyone close to you – a spouse, a friend, a relative, etc. Then write to your prospect as if you were speaking directly to him. Put yourself in his situation. Include him in your special group. Reveal a personal moment in your life. When your copy starts bringing in money, you’ll be glad!
