Want someone to be your customer?
When you enter a prospect’s life, things fall apart fast if you rely on them to supply confidence.
The #1 way to convey confidence is to Assert. Don’t question, or claim, just assert. You believe something about them, about you, or about reality.
Talk and write like what you believe, is fact.
Your reader wants to relax into certainty as quickly as possible. If you make them create their own confidence, they doubt.
Assertion sounds simple, and it is. But someone taught you bad habits that will creep in and weaken your message.
Let’s look at 4 bad and 1 good example of Assertiveness gone wrong and right.
Examples:
A. Don’t start with a question, early
It’s almost never a good idea to ask a question in the first moments of a new communication. Questions push labor and the need for confidence onto the reader, and you shouldn’t do that in the beginning.
This example would be stronger if they cut the question. Even with no other changes. Re-read it without the question, and see the difference.
B. Don’t brag
I’d make 2 changes to this one:
- ‘Braggy’ words, like ‘ideal’, don’t instill confidence. They actually put prospects on guard. I’d cut it.
- Internal repetition is always bad. They use the word ‘revenue’ 4 times in 3 seconds. It’s not a typo, exactly, but gives the same sloppiness feeling.
C. Don’t expect them to gloss over lies
Will hiring a fractional executive result in you or your company achieving full potential? No, it will not. Obviously.
If you want people to believe you, don’t hope they’ll be okay with white lies that ‘everyone uses’.
D. They nailed it.
I didn’t write any of these examples, but someone like me wrote this one. I know because of ‘embedded’. This is very good — embedded describes the working arrangement of having a fractional executive at your company, and also conveys trust. You don’t embed (which is a deliberate action) someone into your team unless you trust them and they’re valuable. Very smart use of assertiveness and confidence.
E. Don’t be aggressive
“Don’t let your in-house marketer fool you”. To choose this company, you need to either distrust, dislike or denigrate the employee you selected and see every day. Assertive doesn’t have to be positive, but it should never be antagonistic.
Summary
When you’re writing to strangers, you need to provide all the confidence they’ll need. The more confidence they have to bring, the less they’ll believe.
Assume you need to do all their thinking and feeling for them first, until they feel comfortable taking the wheel.
Then let them drive.
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I’m Dean. I figure out what companies will say to prospects, first.
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