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.

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The other day I was asked a question I hear all too often: “How do I distinguish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effective and frequently used copywriting and marketing tools. It’s your “Unique Selling Proposition,” or USP.

(I prefer to call it a “Unique Selling Position.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Positioning,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of positioning rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspiring copywriters and marketers that a USP is what distinguishes you from the pack. It increases perceived value, expertise, and credibility — without needing to state it outright.

But since I hear this question often, particularly from copywriters just entering the field, I sense that it’s because people need a little help in defining their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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Many copywriters, both new and experienced, struggle with how much to charge their clients. In fact, it is a problem that many in the service industry face.

The dilemma?

Charge too little and you risk losing credibility in the eyes of your customers and potential clients. Additionally, the quality of your work, even if it is worth 100 times what they paid for it, will be seen as having diminished value.

Worst of all, when you charge too little, you may begin to resent the project, the client, or even your chosen profession.

In short, charging too little doesn’t do anyone any good, least of all you.

On the other hand, if you charge too much you run the risk of losing a potential client. You may lose out on opportunities to work with clients who could open doors and provide you and your business with an abundance of work.

The solution?

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Part of my job as a copywriter includes, from time to time, creating names for businesses, products, and services. Choosing a name may be the single, most important business decision you will ever make.

We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. Limited by people’s very short attention span, your marketing message has to be effective to the degree that it must communicate its essence and create top-of-mind awareness within an extremely short amount of time.

Names are often the best tools — and sometimes the only ones — for accomplishing this efficiently.

In the game of positioning, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the marketplace and must do so instantly. While uniqueness is an important factor, there are many other elements that can help the anchoring process — elements that help a name become memorable as well as chosen when a customer experiences a specific need or desire.

So, here are some simple rules to follow when choosing a name for your company or product.

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After that last article on viral marketing, some people emailed me wanting more information about how to create at least the perception of uniqueness.

Let me give you a few tips, inspired by the “Law Of Leadership” from my two favorite mentors, Jack Trout and Al Ries.

Often, many businesses build their entire marketing strategy around a particular brand and its “better” qualities. Claiming superiority smacks of being untrue and is often a very risky endeavor. In other words, if you claim that you’re the best, your statement will be suspect.

When a mentor told me that “implication is more powerful than specification,” I realized that this, in itself, implied many things as well. What I pulled from that statement is, it is much more effective to imply superiority — to be perceived as being a superior company or one with a superior product — than to simply being (or outright stating that one is) superior.

But how do you get others to perceive that you’re the best? How does one imply superiority without stating it outright? The following are a few pointers to guide you in that direction.

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I was recently interviewed by a print magazine about how I started my business. In it, I offered several tips and ideas on how to carve a niche in the marketplace that I personally applied.

And I realized that some of these tips were particularly powerful. So I wanted to reprint some of my answers here for you.

If you know my personal story, you know how niche marketing played an important role in my career.

Long story short, I feared rejection immensely, which led to a reclusive childhood. I wanted to overcome my fears and decided to dive into the world of sales in order to fight them. Years passed and many failures ensued until I finally became the top producing salesperson in Canada for a Fortune 500 company.

How did I accomplish that?

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Have you ever picked up a book off the shelf at a local bookstore, read the front and back covers, opened it up and, after reading a few pages, just couldn’t put it down?

Do you remember, after buying the book, how you flipped each page with an almost excruciating curiosity because the story was so tantalizing, you became increasingly riveted to the book with each subsequent chapter?

Copy is, or should be, the same.

Look at it this way: Good copy makes a good case. But great copy tells a good story. A great copywriter is also a great salesperson. But all great copywriters AND all great salespeople also have one thing in common…

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