I had this client whom I can’t name for legal purposes.
He’s a big self improvement guru.
Someone whose name you would instantly recognize.
I got hired to write a sales script for him.
Took me a week.
I put together the best possible script that I could.
An absolute masterpiece if I do say so myself.
He was gonna use this script in both a video and at a live seminar to sell from the stage.
I email it to his agent.
Put my feet up on the desk and congratulate myself on a job well done.
A week later the agent calls me and tells me there’s a big problem.
ZERO sales.
I nearly fell off my chair!
What?
How can that be?
“Your script sucks! That’s how!”
I’m pretty sure that was his response.
Now understand something.
At this point I was a relatively new entrepreneur and this guy was my biggest client.
And he paid me over $10,000 to write this script.
And he was pissed.
He felt like he was ripped off and was threatening to tell everyone in our circle that I'm no longer a capable copywriter.
I ask him if we can set an appointment so I could watch him record it on video.
I show to up to the studio.
The teleprompter is all set.
The camera starts rolling.
That’s when I had an epiphany.
Listen up because this is really important.
It doesn’t matter how good the script is if you’re a sh*tty actor.
In other words knowing what to say is one thing.
Knowing how and when to say it is a whole ‘nother ballgame.
You need both technique and delivery.
Here I was handing this guy what I could only describe as “persuasion gold” and he was screwing it all up.
And doing so in all sorts of ways.
Tonality was off.
Body language didn't match his verbal language.
He couldn’t tell good stories.
He didn’t understand how to use metaphors.
When he sold from the stage he couldn’t answer questions or give a good analogy.
That’s when I realized I gave him the ingredients but not the recipe.
Two very different things.
The ingredients are nothing more than components.
The recipe is where the magic happens.
I needed to find a way to fill in the gaps.
I needed to figure out a way to solve the “other piece of the puzzle”.
The part that separates the person who knows a few persuasion tricks versus the master communicator.
It’s one thing to fire off a technique here and there and get someone to buy something.
It’s a completely different thing to transform yourself into someone who can: