Bonus! Thou Shall Put it in Writing

Here’s a bonus com­mand­ment. I thought I’d make it a bonus because 11 would sound a lit­tle funny, wouldn’t you think? And it is indeed a bonus since, with all that you have learned, you would never be as effec­tive if I didn’t give this extra piece of advice while imple­ment­ing the first 10.

I can never stress enough, whether it’s in this book or in my sem­i­nars that, in order to cre­ate end­less streams of new, repeat and refer­ral busi­ness, you must turn every sin­gle nook-​​and-​​cranny of your busi­ness into an effec­tive mar­ket­ing sys­tem. Every­thing you do must become a mar­ket­ing activity.

In other words, every step you take dur­ing the nor­mal course of your daily busi­ness activ­i­ties must include mak­ing your­self known as the expert in your field — at least in the minds of those who are in it. All your cor­re­spon­dence, lit­er­a­ture, pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als and adver­tis­ing must con­tain at least eight or nine of these com­mand­ments — although 10 would be more effective.

The power of the writ­ten word has been proven to be of immense pro­por­tions. Roger Daw­son, in his book “The Secrets of Power Nego­ti­at­ing: How to Get Any­thing You Want,” empha­sized a uni­ver­sal law, which states that peo­ple will believe more what they see in writ­ing than what they don’t see in writing.

As Roger points out: “If it is said it could be true, but if it is writ­ten then it must be true.” There­fore, when posi­tion­ing your firm or prod­uct, your efforts will be far more effec­tive if they are done through the writ­ten word.

For exam­ple, writ­ing your own book is indeed an effec­tive if not essen­tial tool for estab­lish­ing your cred­i­bil­ity. They say that you must “pub­lish or perish.”

Today, that state­ment has greater mean­ing. In an soci­ety where peo­ple are con­stantly bom­barded with mar­ket­ing mes­sages and leery of claims of any kind, the process of com­mu­ni­cat­ing your unique­ness, your com­pet­i­tive advan­tage and espe­cially your exper­tise through the writ­ten word (such as by writ­ing books, arti­cles, endorse­ments, reviews and press releases) is far more cred­i­ble and believ­able than any direct pro­mo­tional message.

Nev­er­the­less, start by putting things down in writ­ing. If you don’t have a brochure or pub­lic­ity kit, make one! If your fees are not listed on a fee sched­ule for all your clients to see, print one! If arti­cles writ­ten by or about you have been pub­lished, make copies and pass them around!

If you have ref­er­ence let­ters writ­ten by clients who ini­tially had con­cerns or objec­tions, offer copies to prospects who have the same con­cerns! If you don’t yet have a cat­a­log of your prod­ucts or ser­vices (both in a pack­aged form and in divi­sions), includ­ing your lead gen­er­a­tors, cre­ate one!

I may be overly empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of putting things down in writ­ing, but I feel that I can never stress it enough. Real­ize that the above items, along with all of the tools that you’ve learned in the pre­vi­ous com­mand­ments, are cru­cially impor­tant to have in writ­ing in some form or another in order to cre­ate last­ing top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness. The writ­ten word is immensely powerful!

Let’s take the exam­ple of the cos­metic sur­geon one more time.

A patient being con­sulted for surgery has con­cerns about pain. Now, if the doc­tor says that the pro­ce­dure is pain­less, his will be some­what believ­able. But how much more believ­able will it be if the doc­tor pulled out of a binder a tes­ti­mo­nial writ­ten by a patient, one who had the exact same con­cern prior to his surgery, and in it claimed that the pro­ce­dure was indeed painless?

Let me share with you what I do in my own con­sult­ing prac­tice. For instance, in my car or in my trav­els, I not only carry a pro­mo­tional kit but also usu­ally carry sev­eral large brief­cases that con­tain the fol­low­ing items:

A Business Portfolio

This is a large three-​​ring binder that con­tains copies of ads, books, white papers, book­lets, busi­ness forms, radio scripts, fly­ers, direct-​​mail pieces, infomer­cials, sales let­ters and com­mer­cials that I pro­duced. In short, my port­fo­lio pro­vides sam­ples of my work (some are now dig­i­tized on my laptop).

A Reference Binder

This binder con­tains just tes­ti­mo­ni­als writ­ten by sat­is­fied clients. But the neat part if that they are grouped — where a group rep­re­sents let­ters from clients who had a spe­cific con­cern. The binder is neatly divided into sec­tions for quick retrieval in case I need to con­vince a prospect with a sim­i­lar objection.

A Presentation Binder

Being a com­puter lover, I use Pow­er­Point Pre­sen­ta­tions. But if my lap­top doesn’t work for any rea­son, I use my pre­sen­ta­tion binder. It con­tains an overview of my com­pany, my brochures, lists of my prod­ucts and ser­vices, fee sched­ules, lists of past clients and sam­ple con­tracts. It also con­tains charts, graphs, sta­tis­tics and “tick­lers” that will help to sell me and my services.

And Media Kits (lots of them!)

I always carry around a large quan­tity of press kits that con­tain recent news releases, arti­cles writ­ten by and about me, tran­scripts of inter­views, brochures and busi­ness cards, books and reports that I’ve writ­ten, awards and let­ters of recog­ni­tion, recent copies of my newslet­ters and of course my résumés.

If you don’t have a lap­top com­puter, you can still cre­ate a larger pre­sen­ta­tion binder offer­ing the mate­ri­als that I just described. You can pur­chase a spe­cial binder that bends halfway and props up on a table or desk. While you don’t have to have the entire pack­age I just gave you as an exam­ple, you can fit most of it into your spe­cial binder and use it as your “bible.”

Finally, a quick word about writ­ten mate­ri­als. Some years ago, I came across an arti­cle (I believe it was in “Entre­pre­neur Mag­a­zine”) that gave inter­est­ing sta­tis­tics gath­ered from a recent sur­vey con­ducted by a direct-​​mail mar­ket­ing firm for a credit card com­pany. The sur­vey found the fol­low­ing results.

Doc­u­ments that are high in con­trast (i.e., dark print on light col­ored paper) have pulled a greater response over col­ored print on col­ored paper. (And they also found that the higher the con­trast is, the greater the response will be).

For exam­ple, it found that tra­di­tional black on white is best, yet color on white or black print on light col­ored paper is accept­able. As long as you main­tain a con­trast between your text the paper you print them on, you’re rolling.

The research also showed that bor­ders (frames around texts) seemed to have increased read­er­ship by 20% over plain text with faint or nonex­is­tent bor­ders. It also found that cer­tain words pulled more than oth­ers, includ­ing the words “save,” “free” and “dis­cover.” Using the right words that pull the best deserves a book of its own — or a copy­writer like me! But for now, just remem­ber to try using these words in your printed mate­ri­als as much as possible.

(By the way, although I don’t remem­ber since this arti­cle appeared many years ago, it is my guess that one of these three words even­tu­ally became the name of that credit card com­pany con­duct­ing the research!)

And more impor­tant, make sure they all con­tain if not stress your name, tagline, spe­cial­iza­tion and unique category.

It is my sin­cere hope that these power posi­tion­ing strate­gies will help you cre­ate end­less streams of new, repeat and refer­ral busi­ness. I wish you good luck, both on your quest for increased busi­ness and greater busi­ness health!

Dynam­i­cally yours,


Michel Fortin
The Suc­cess Doc­tor, Inc.

P.S.: Want more? Check out my blog, read my arti­cles, sub­scribe to my free ezine, or bet­ter yet, join my pri­vate mem­ber­ship site and watch videos of my in action, writ­ing and dis­sect­ing copy “live.”

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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