A recent coaching session touched upon the growing trend that some marketers have adopted to squeeze out sales from exiting traffic.

In other words, you visit a website and read the salesletter. You decide it’s not for you, so you leave. But when you try leave (either as you close your browser or simply hover your mouse outside of it), the website attempts to make a last-ditch offer.

The common practice is to offer a discount, and a recent trend is to make it through virtual sales assistant just before the prospect clicks away from the screen.

(Virtual assistant or not, it is no different than a one-time offer appearing in an exit pop-up or spawned browser window once the visitor leaves.)

Not only is the practice annoying, it can be detrimental to your sales efforts.

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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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Here are the worksheets to use when applying Michel Fortin’s G.O.A.L. method. You can simply use the tables below as a model to guide you. You can use them on a sheet of paper, in your journal, or on your computer.

But if you do prefer the printable version, you can download this book in digital PDF format by clicking here. Most browsers have the PDF plug-in already installed.

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“I practiced the art of getting more things done rather than getting the really important things done well.”
– Alec MacKenzie

“We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.”
– Jim Rohn

Now is the time to set your GOALs. Your “guides” are goals that will most likely stem from your personal values because, having gone through the process so far, you will have a pretty good idea of what kind of goals you truly want. Take a new sheet of paper and write at the top the words “My Guides.” Then, write down what you want to be, do, or have.

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“The most important things in life aren’t things.”
– Francis the Talking Mule

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
– Bertrand Russell

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want to they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, to have what you want.”
– Margaret Young

First, take a sheet of paper and write at the top “My Values.” Start by listing your top ten values. Ask yourself what kind of feeling, value, or personal meaning you would like in your life right now. What are your innermost convictions? What do your really value in life? What are you truly passionate about? What are your core desires?

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“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where there should be. Now, put foundations under them.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“When you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
– Jim Rohn

A question people often ask me in my seminars is, “Why are there so many people who succeed, have everything a person can ever wish for, yet still feel unhappy, unsatisfied, or unfulfilled?” Why, in other words, do so many people successfully fail? You might wonder what this question has to do with self-esteem. To explain, let me draw on an analogy.

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“There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.”
– Ralph Waldo Trine

“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.”
– Miguel de Cervantes

In everything you do or want to do in life, you are always governed by law and not by chance. Natural laws are principles or explanations of why things are the way they are. Principles defined by Webster are “fundamental laws or facts of nature.” Out of the many you have read or will read about in this book, there is one, however, that is the foundational principle to all success.

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