Copywriting And Direct Marketing Suicide 3 All Too Common Closing Mistakes

In selling, the close is treated as the most important part of the sale. And with good reason – if you don’t get them to sign on the dotted line, then all of your energy up until that point has been a waste.
There is endless debate about the close’s importance in face-to-face selling. My belief is it is situational. There are times where it is vitally important, others it isn’t so important.
When selling by media it is critical, because once they throw your promotion away, click away from a webpage or anything else, then you are guaranteed that the opportunity to sell to that particular individual is lost.
There is no excuse to close poorly and anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Here are three all too common mistakes I see when reviewing other businesses copy.
Not Knowing What You Are ‘Selling:’
It is far easier to create sales copy that converts when you know what your specific goal is. You see this all too often in website copy – the owner doesn’t know what they are trying to do with the present traffic.
For example – if your job is to generate an optin then your copy needs to be measured by its effectiveness at that task and no other.
Too often you see websites where they are telling you all about their product – not helpful for generating leads.
Not Being Explicit About ‘The Next Step:’
You’ve got to tell them what to do next. If it is fill their name in the form below – tell them to do that, call a 1800 number and order – tell them to do that. It’s funny how copywriters – especially ones that have never made a living selling belly-to-belly with live customers, get really timid about asking for ‘action.’
Giving explicit, clear, next steps and you’ll see your response rate sky rocket.
Failure To Invalidate All Other Options:
Dan Kennedy is fond of adding this step to basic sales architecture. But a lot of copy doesn’t handle objections very well. It makes a brilliant case for the product or service and it is expected that it will be enough.
A customer has a myriad of options available to them in any selling situation. All these options need to be invalidated in the lead up to the close. Sales people are taught to ‘handle’ objections. Good copywriters see objections coming and circumvent them long before they ever arise as objections.
There are three ways you can use to master the art of closing stronger in print.