John Carlton: How To Prepare Your Sweet Little Sales Message To Survive and Thrive In The Harsh Reality of Modern Markets

All your plans and high-end technologies and cash-dense marketing won’t do squat for you… if you ignore the fundamentals of good salesmanship. Thus, some essential “Step One” advice from a grizzled old-school professional can transform the way you launch any project or career. John Carlton (“The most ripped-off writer on the Web and the most respected copywriting teacher alive.”) stocks your tool kit with

• essential street psychology…
• old-school salesmanship tactics…
• and the high-end skill sets for tweaking interest, persuading and closing the modern ADHD-addled, trust-damaged, skeptical prospect.

5 Old School Revelations that changed his life:

13:05 1. Your Ad is a little salesman going out into a hostile situation.

No one is going to explain what he means.

3 ways to look at your message:

• Must be presentable format. Not threatening.
• Bullets, spacing, captions on photos, 3-part headline, look as familiar as possible.
• Armed to the teeth: Charming: Acceptable outrageousness/ Must connect with your target audience.
• Correct packaging: Won’t wind up in email filters, won’t get slapped by Google, won’t get thrown in the trash
• Street-savvy skills: AIDA: Attention = hook Interest = get inside his head. Find out what keeps him awake at night. Desire = Know his weak points Action = Knocking off the fence – Answer objections

24:54 2. Only 2 things motivate people – Greed or Fear (Maslow’s hierarchy)

27:35 3. The Two reasons people buy…or don’t buy

• The reason they tell you they buy
• The real reason

Lizard Brain Raw need. Basic bodily functions

Glitchy neo-cortex emotions: Language, critical thinking

Main objection: How to explain his purchase to other people?

34:50 4. Reality Checks

• You are likely deluded on key points. Keep your BS detector activated.
• Assumption kills. Action heals. Don’t assume anything. Don’t get caught up in fads.
• Past victories can make you lay and blind. Almost all successful entrepreneurs face bankruptcy at some point in their lives. When you get good you start to think that you are “owed” a victory. A lot of times the second project ends up bombing.

46:08 5. Business is all about problem solving.

• Break it down
• Fix the components. Easier to solve small problems than the big over-arching problem. You can do surveys or heat-mapping.
• Be clear on goals (2-list advantage) Make a table with 2 columns

Left column: Everything you want to happen.

Right column: Things you don’t want to do. Do the things in the left list and don’t do the ones on the right list.

At first you may need middle column: Things you really don’t want to do but have to for now.

Email yourself a to-do list for the week. Status report: How you feel about what is going on and what you have to do. When you write things down your brain lets it go and relaxes.

52:10 One of the biggest desires people have is to be respected.

1. Isolate the biggest sticking point in your business.
2. Break it down…who, what, why, where, when, how?
3. Fix the individual components. One at a time.
4. Create a to-do list and email it to yourself each week.
5. Keep a status report so you know how far you are progressing.
6. When you have fixed one component, start on another.
7. Rinse and repeat.

John’s recommended books:

Claude Hopkins:  My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising

Robert Collier Letter Book

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Chart

Og Mandino Website