The other day, one of my coach­ing stu­dents emailed me about his dilemma — some­thing that’s all too com­mon in our business.

“Too many times,” he said, “I’ve known what I needed to do, and I always end up wait­ing weeks on end to do it.” He asked, “How do you cope with procrastination?”

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is indu­bitably the copywriter’s most sti­fling prob­lem. Since our job is fraught with dead­lines, pro­cras­ti­na­tion can be one of the costli­est prob­lems in the copy­writ­ing busi­ness. It can mur­der your reputation…

… And your career!

So, how do you cope with pro­cras­ti­na­tion? Even bet­ter, how do you over­come it? Here are six tips I use, which helps me to get more done faster.

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Take­away sell­ing, for the unini­ti­ated, is a way to limit the sup­ply of a prod­uct or ser­vice in some way to increase scarcity of an offer. Because it’s a proven fact that scarcity sells.

It’s that age­less law of sup­ply and demand. The less the sup­ply is, the greater the demand will be.

Peo­ple don’t know how much they want some­thing until it’s about to be taken away from them. As Jim Rohn once said, “With­out a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.”

Why? Because pro­cras­ti­na­tion is the biggest killer of sales — par­tic­u­larly online where the chances of a prospect stay­ing on or return­ing to a web­site (in order to think about buy­ing), in today’s click-​​happy world, are just as scarce.

It’s like walk­ing into a depart­ment store and you see a shirt you’re inter­ested in. Since there’s none in your size, you ask the sales clerrk if one is avail­able. The clerk goes into the back­room and emerges a few moments later, say­ing, “I found one in your size…

“… But it’s the only one we have left in stock.”

Now, how much more do you want that shirt?

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