Recently, a coach­ing client asked me about deal­ing with prospec­tive clients over the phone.

This copy­writer under­stood the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with prospects and answer­ing their pre-​​sale ques­tions. How­ever, like me, he pre­ferred to avoid the tele­phone and asked me if his strat­egy was sound.

Free con­sul­ta­tions are often a nec­es­sary step in secur­ing clients in your early days as a copy­writer before you’ve estab­lished your exper­tise and devel­oped a reputation.

It’s nat­ural that poten­tial clients want to get a feel for your style and stan­dards with a “get­ting to know you ses­sion.” Quite often, they will want to do this via a phone con­sul­ta­tion with you.

I’m a big believer in open­ing the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and I also like to pick up the phone to speak with a client when writ­ing copy.

But before a client hires me, I pre­fer to remain off the phone. Why? Because the tele­phone can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and even hurt your business.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

I know that the yel­low pages’ peo­ple will hate me for this, but your yel­low pages’ ad, although an essen­tial part of your entire mar­ket­ing machine, doesn’t have to be of a large size, in color, promi­nently dis­played, or tied-​​in with other gim­micks that the yel­low pages sales­peo­ple have to offer. While nec­es­sary, the yel­low pages should only be used as sup­port systems.

The con­cept of this entire book is to teach you that cre­at­ing top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness (not “insti­tu­tional” adver­tis­ing) should be your main mar­ket­ing goal. When peo­ple have seen your ad, heard about you, or have a need for your ser­vices at any par­tic­u­lar time, your con­tact infor­ma­tion may or may not be avail­able to them at that par­tic­u­lar moment. There­fore, you want the yel­low pages to back you up and not use them as a full-​​blown mar­ket­ing medium.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Each call is about 2 hours long, and cut into 30-​​minute seg­ments to down­load quicker. To lis­ten imme­di­ately, sim­ply click the “+” (plus) sign, then click the start but­ton (the right arrow icon).

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Each call is about 2 hours long, and cut into 30-​​minute seg­ments to down­load quicker. To lis­ten imme­di­ately, sim­ply click the “+” (plus) sign, then click the start but­ton (the right arrow icon).

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Each call is about 2 hours long, and cut into 30-​​minute seg­ments to down­load quicker. To lis­ten imme­di­ately, sim­ply click the “+” (plus) sign, then click the start but­ton (the right arrow icon).

Read the rest of this post or share it »