Imagine you have a friend trying to set you up on a blind date.
(For this example let's assume you're a dude who's into women.)
And let’s say you’ve been set up on some bad blind dates before. You put work into yourself and you’re a total catch - but for some reason every blind date you’ve been set up with has been the opposite.
So… you’re now skeptical any time someone tries to set you up and are more likely to say “no thanks” than “yes”.
But your friend setting you up now knows this.
They see exactly what a catch you are.
And they know it’s an insult not to set you up with someone at your (very high) level.
So they’ve already pulled you aside and said…
Hey [your name], I know you've gone on some bad blind dates with people that were NOT your type. And they were definitely NOT on your level either. With that in mind, I have someone who I think is exactly your type — and who I think you’re REALLY going to dig.
They pull out a picture of her and - holy moly she IS your type! In fact she’s gorgeous.
You can think of this as The Lead (which we covered in yesterday’s email).
They grabbed your attention and made you interested to hear more.
But it's not enough to make you ready to go out with her yet.
That's because your mind starts racing with a thousand questions.
- Why is she single?
- What are her hobbies?
- I don't drink, but what if she drinks?
- I'm a homebody, but what if she's a hard partier?
- Does she have kids?
- ...and so on...
But your friend already anticipated all this. They follow up...
She runs her own business like you, no kids, loves stand-up comedy, doesn't drink, very spiritual but not chakras-and-horoscopes spiritual, loves her family, has done therapy & loves self-development, and is a total homebody who loves gaming on the weekends. She was actually in a 5 year relationship up until a year ago, the guy even proposed, but she found out he was cheating so she broke up with him and took a year off dating to focus on herself. She's just now re-entering the dating market and I think you'd really like her, even if it's not the right romantic match.
You’re likely to give this date a shot now, right?
In other words, your friend just sold you.
It’s harder to say “no” than to say “yes”.
What your friend just demonstrated was the third element of The 7 Figure Sales Writing
Framework: The Sales Argument.
Think of The Sales Argument as the “objection killer” section of your copy.
What your friend did in the above example is to take all your potential objections - why is she single? what if she's got different interests than me? what if I don't like her personality? - and squash them...
While also describing amazing features she has that may excite you.
In other words, the job of The Sales Argument is to:
- Recognize how the reader has struggled with their problem
- Make it clear you understand those struggles
- And make it clear you have a real solution to those struggles
It demonstrates you a) know who your target audience is, b) know what they actually want, and c) have exactly that for them. That's it.
If The Lead grabs your prospect’s attention, the purpose of The Sales Argument is to make it clear that you truly, deeply understand their problem - and more importantly, understand how to solve it.
When it’s done right, your prospects almost can’t say no.
So that brings us to our (fake) product, The 5 Day Workday.
Two days ago we outlined what we learned by
interviewing the ideal prospects for this product (solo entrepreneurs struggling with productivity).
We asked why do they struggle, what do those struggles make them feel, and what would it look like if they solved their problem.
Now we’re simply going to take each of those in order, recognize any objections they may have to our solution, outline what that solution actually is, and paint a picture of what their life could look like with that solution.
Here’s what I mean, continued from yesterday:
It might seem like an exaggeration to say I can give you a 5x-10x boost in productivity, and do it
overnight, but it’s not actually that crazy.
My guess is you’re struggling to get much done now.
You know all the “rules” of productivity.
You’ve read the books, watched the YouTube videos, and put the basics - and even some advanced stuff - to work.
And maybe it works for a day or two - but then everything quickly collapses.
You’re getting exhausted after just 2-3 hours of work every day. You get upset at yourself that that’s all you can do, and try to force yourself to work more, but that just makes the problem worse.
It’s around this point that you open up TikTok or Reddit or
Instagram, thinking maybe you just need a quick 15 minute brain break… but that quickly turns into a 2-3 hour binge session.
Then when you’re ready to work again, real life kicks in - all the unplanned stuff like one of your kids coming home early from school, or a worker coming to your home to fix something, or a text message that needs to be handled immediately - and you need to step away to deal with it.
By this point it’s already 4pm. You’re supposed to be done for the day but you’ve barely produced any work and you feel like shit.
You promise you’ll fit in a little more work at night… but if you even manage to do it (unlikely), you’re completely exhausted and get nothing done - except making yourself feel even more guilty for wasting another
workday.
And the more you do this, the more you fall off your routine. Every day gets worse - sometimes you just start with social media and give up entirely by noon.
You’re frustrated with yourself, you feel shame, and you’re embarrassed any time someone asks how your business is going - or, worse, they see how badly it’s going and don’t bother asking at all.
Here’s the deal: this is fixable.
In fact, it can be fixed overnight.
And you can be doing A LOT more than you think you’re capable of - 5x-10x more, easily (which isn’t all that crazy considering how little you’re getting done now).
But it’s not doing the things you’ve been doing.
It requires a complete mental shift.
Installing a new productivity operating system on your brain.
When you do, the results are immediate and profound.
And the easiest way to describe what I mean is with a quick story about Elon Musk.
Whatever your opinion is of the guy, he has a reputation for getting an extraordinary amount of work done on extremely short timelines most people would say are impossible.
And, yeah, he has a reputation for working people hard. (This part I strongly disagree with. If work is leaving me in an exhausted heap
every day, I’m doing it wrong. I prefer about 4 hours a day myself then I spend the rest of the day recharging.)
But the story goes that there was a massive engineering problem at SpaceX. The team tasked with fixing the problem said, “We can fix it in 6 months.”
The problem: this was for a launch that needed to go out in 6 weeks.
So Elon simply said, “Ok, I hear you. So how can we do it in 6 weeks?”
The engineering team told him it would be impossible. There was no way to do it that fast.
So he upped the stakes even more. “Ok, I hear you. How do you think we can do it in 6 days?”
They protested again. It’s impossible, they said. If we couldn’t do it in 6 weeks, how could we do it in 6 days?
This went on and on until something finally clicked:
The engineering team realized the part causing the problem wouldn’t actually be a problem anymore if they just removed a DIFFERENT part that, on further analysis, turned out to be totally redundant for this particular launch.
The problem was solved in 1 day.
The launch was a success.
The way you approach your work now is the “6 month” way.
Even the more advanced productivity tricks you’ve learned. They all fit into
your “default” mental model for productivity that, unfortunately, just doesn’t work very well. It’s what we’re all taught.
But there are other better mental models to use to approach your work. You can easily install the “6 week” way, or the “6 day” way, or even the “1 day” way, into your brain.
It’s not easy because it requires thinking about your work and workday in a completely different way - but when you do, and when it clicks, it’s an immediate shift.
You will immediately have your best work day ever.
And that will quickly turn into your best week ever.
And it will continue week after week after week.
Month after month, year after year.
Without exhaustion or fatigue.
I want to show you how to do more in 3-4 hours of work per day than you normally do in a week — while…
- Outputting the best work of your life
- Taking days (and sometimes weeks) of guilt-free time off at a moment’s notice whenever you want it because you’re so ahead of schedule
- And becoming the person everyone looks at like, “How in the world do they get so much done?”.
If you’re ready, let’s do this.
Note that the above really just does three things:
- It summarizes what they told us about why they struggle and what that makes them feel (demonstrating we deeply understand their problems)
- It tells a story that presents an alternative and almost radical way to think about productivity (demonstrating we have a solution that really
works they haven’t tried yet)
- It summarizes what they told us about what their dream outcome would look like (demonstrating they will live their dream life after using our course)
A lot of copywriters go on and on and on during their Sales Argument. You can do this - but it’s not necessary. My best copy gets straight to the point demonstrating the above three things and it generally outperforms the long, meandering copy every time.
When you do this right, it tells your readers that you are the expert who can fix their problem. It’s a massive relief for them. FINALLY someone “gets it”.
Now it’s time to make them an offer.
We’ll do that tomorrow with the third element of The 7 Figure Sales Writing Framework: The Offer.
– Derek
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