The Importance Of Creating Resistance In Your Copy
Copyright (c) 2009 Bill Platt
the Phantom Writers
http://thePhantomWriters.com

“Creating Resistance in Your Copy” is an idea that is alien to
most online marketers. After all, online marketers want to
believe that everyone should buy their products and services,
because the more people buying what is being sold, the more money
the marketer will inevitably earn.

Alien Marketing Concept

This concept is so alien that most Internet marketers who see
this article will react as if they are “deer in the
headlights”. If you are looking at this article with a blank
stare – completely bewildered about my suggestion – then you are
likely one of many, who are reacting the same way.

Just the other day, I had this conversation with a small
businessperson. The person with whom I was speaking was clearly
bewildered at the suggestion, and she asked me, “What exactly do
you mean by ‘create resistance’?”

I told her that “creating resistance” is the concept of
eliminating some of your prospects, before they reach the sales
page.

Taking a step back, she said, “What? Why would you want to do
that?”

I explained to her what I am ready to explain to you now.

In her case, by the time I finished explaining the idea to her,
she realized that she was already doing that – albeit,
unconsciously.

Why Would Anyone Want To Create Resistance In Sales Copy?

When you are writing sales copy for a product, there is seldom a
need to create resistance in your sales copy. In fact, when
selling a product, the need is more often to wipe out, eliminate,
diminish or neutralize consumer resistance in your sales copy.

Unless you are creating a product that sells for high dollar and
you intend to offer it exclusively to a select number of people,
the necessity of creating resistance in product sales copy is
almost non-existent.

However, if you are selling a service, the reasons for creating
resistance in your sales copy are endless.

For example:

One company we work with is an Internet marketing consulting
company. The company provides its services to other businesses
based on the billable hour or specific service.

In the case of this company, it does not make sense to talk to
customers who cannot spend a minimum of $300 per month with them.
As a result, they have created resistance in their sales copy to
eliminate the broke, do-it-yourself, home business owner from
their list of prospects. As a small consulting firm, it is
essential for them to separate the wheat from the chaff quickly.

By requiring an appointment for a free consultation, they direct
prospects to a form to be filled out. In that form, they require
phone numbers and email addresses, and they request the prospect
to be as detailed as possible so that the free consultation will
be meaningful.

Another company we work with is a Virtual Assistant Agency. Once
again, it is a matter of finding the customers who can actually
afford the service. By telling prospects in advance that the
minimum billing per month is $1000, the company is able to ensure
that the only companies contacting them are those who seriously
need virtual assistant(s) to help complete work.

By signing the contract, the customer acknowledges in advance
that they should send enough work to the virtual assistant to
ensure that the $1000 per month minimum will not go to waste.

Consumers Have A Natural Resistance To Sales Copy

All of the great sales copywriting teachers speak to the notion
of “sales resistance” – the natural roadblocks in the mind of
the consumer that holds the consumer back from making a purchase.

I actually found it quite interesting in that while researching
this article, I could NOT find anyone talking about “creating
resistance” in sales copy. The guru’s are only talking about
how to “eliminate” or “melt away sales resistance”.

Now, one might argue that the reason no one is discussing the
creation of resistance in sales copy is because one should not do
it. But I have had this discussion with a lot of people. Although
no one is talking about doing it, service providers who have been
in business for a number of years tend to deliberately build
“sales resistance” into their sales presentations!

Identifying And Eliminating Time Wasters

Once a service business has been in operation a number of years,
the owners / managers of those businesses tend to start seeing
patterns that frequently cause financial losses to the company.

When as a business owner / manager, you discover that certain
customers cost more money than they generate for your business,
you will seek ways to remedy that problem. Often times, it makes
far more sense not to sell to certain people – the people who
have exhibited certain traits that will lead to nothing but lost
productivity for the service provider.

If you operate a service business, you will likely have seen
similar patterns yourself. In my case, there are certain
behaviors that some prospects exhibit that set off red flags for
me. I used to ignore those “red flag” moments, but I always
regretted doing so later.

The number one red flag for me in my business is the “carrot on
the stick” approach offered by some prospects. It goes something
like this: “I am going to try this once, and if it works out, I
will send you tons of business.”

When I was in college, I used to wait tables in a restaurant. I
saw the same behavior even then. People would come in and make
grandiose promises at the beginning of the meal, “If you give us
great service, we tip really well.”

Don’t believe it for a moment! It is a lie, usually designed to
get something for nothing or to encourage you to discount your
services, “just for them”.

When I was waiting tables, it did not matter how good of service
you gave those guys. You could ignore every other table in the
restaurant to give them better service and the tip never exceeded
two pennies!

In my business, if you bite the bait, they will take their
discount this “one time”, and then they are gone… forever…
I know their disappearance is not because my service is less than
worthy… I have too many customers who have been with me for
years; to believe that my service was the reason those people
never came back.

I have learned that the “carrot on the stick” approach is
designed to take advantage of people – to take advantage of me.

Once a prospect raises this red flag for me, I kill the free
advice and the extra attention that I give to their job. I do the
job and let the chips fall where they may – my basic service will
stand on its own, without any effort to help the customer get
more out of it. I will not let this person waste any more of my
time, period. Unless this person comes back for additional
service, I no longer spend extra time with them.

Eliminating Time Wasters Is Easy If You Create Resistance In Your
Copy

As a service provider, you DO want to eliminate “sales
resistance” in your basic sales copy. Once you have tweaked your
copy to help the majority of your prospects to overcome their
natural resistance to your sales message, then it is time to add
some resistance back into your copy.

You want as many people to buy your service as possible, but you
also want to discourage those that you know will be a waste of
your time and resources.

My friend who has the consulting business allows people an
initial consultation to help him and the customer to determine if
they will be able to work together and if his consulting company
will be able to add value to the prospects business. In his sales
copy, he points out that after the initial consultation, all
hours will be billable hours. Because he makes his prospects jump
through hoops to get the free consultation, he is assured that he
is only going to have real prospects at the other end of the
phone line during a free consultation. And because his prospects
understand that all work beyond the initial free consultation is
billable work, they don’t waste his limited time.

The Virtual Assistant does not need to layer on the resistance at
the same level. By clearly explaining what one should expect in
terms of the service within the first thirty days of the
agreement, it becomes self-evident to the prospect that the
service is not for the faint at heart. Investing in a virtual
assistant can be a bit expensive, but the payoff can also be
quite large. By laying out a map of what one can expect from the
service, it clearly defines to the prospect what the cost of such
a service could be. And as such, it quickly filters out those
people who are not a good fit for the Virtual Assistant’s
company.

In my case, I don’t provide much sales resistance in my sales
copy to my prospective customers. In fact, the only sales
resistance in my copy is my prices.

The companies that call me a competitor have lower prices than I
do – much lower prices. Although they refer to me as one of THEIR
competitors, I really don’t consider them to be mine. My service
is so much different from theirs that I find it very difficult to
think of them as “MY competition”.

For people who take the time to get educated about my service or
to take it for a real spin around the block with a full ten
article distributions, my higher prices are often considered a
great investment of resources. With the built-in sales resistance
in the form of a higher price, my customers ensure that I always
serve higher-quality authors – authors who understand that the
power of article marketing is in the strength of the content.

I Might Be Going Out On A Limb With This Article…

The fact that I could not find anyone else discussing the value
of “adding sales resistance to sales copy” may suggest that I
am just a total goof. But I do know for a fact that small
business owners in the service industry do deliberately create
sales resistance in their copy.

In the conversation that I mentioned in the beginning of this
article – the one where I was discussing this idea with a small
businessperson, who had her “deer in the headlights” moment -
the lady I was speaking with said to me after I explained the
concept to her, “Oh, you mean like when I tell my customers that
we provide ‘quality’ over ‘quantity’?”

Indeed! Telling your prospects that you provide ‘quality’ over
‘quantity’ automatically tells your prospects that your
services may be a bit more expensive, but the quality of the work
will more than make up for the difference in pricing.

I know that many small business owners do deliberately build
sales resistance into their sales copy, and I cannot blame them
for doing so.

I also know that my pricing is a disincentive to some people to
use my services. But that is okay too. The publishers who receive
articles from me know that I distribute a higher quality article.
They may not realize that it is because of the pricing resistance
on my site, but they do know that we typically distribute some of
the best-written articles available online, from some of the
biggest names in their industries.

At the end of a ten-article cycle, most of my customers find that
their articles have found publication on websites that have a
much higher perceived value in the Internet marketplace. In fact,
it is not at all uncommon for me to hear from clients who are
happy to share that they have generated several thousand dollars
in new sales as a result of an article I distributed for them.
Now that is music to my ears…

———————————————————-
Bill Platt has owned and operated http://thePhantomWriters.com/
since 2001. If you would like to learn more about his article
distribution service, visit his website. To read 100′s of Bill’s
Tweet-sized tips for article marketing, SEO, and more, visit:
http://thephantomwriters.com/tips/index.php
Bill is also active on Twitter @
http://twitter.com/contentmanager