Step 12 - A Long Night's Journey Into Day

There's a story that I have never been able to confirm through search, and my memory is fuzzy on the facts, but it comes from a credible source, so I will repeat it because I love it so much. In the past, there were many books that were unknown, but still sold way more copies over time than a New York Times Best Seller. These were books sold by long sales copy to a precisely selected market through a direct mail campaign. This is long before the advent of Amazon. The example I was told by Alexi Neocleous at a Copywriting seminar in Australia, was about a book (he never told us the subject) that was 186 pages long. The sales letter selling the book was 87 pages long! Yep, the sales letter was almost half the length of the book itself. Huh? How do you figure that? It's why long copy sells. When you are selling food, dentists, holidays, spare parts, essential information etc. you don't need to convince people that they need what you are selling them. You only have to convince them that your version of this is better, special or different in some way that will benefit them. However, when you are selling Alexander Technique, or a book with counter-intuitive ideas, your first job is to convince the reader that they even want it. This is what takes time. This means that first you have to propose that you can solve your reader's problem, that you're a credible person to do this, that other people have benefitted too, that if it doesn't work the reader will be compensated, that this is totally unlike anything (s)he has seen before, that only you have it to offer them and finally it's worth the ridiculous price you are asking them to pay. That's one herculean task to complete in one letter! No wonder it takes time. What you have going for you is the desperation/enthusiasm of the reader. Providing you keep their attention, and providing they have a strong desire, they want you to write a lot. In fact, they need you to convince them that this is the right decision. That's why long copy is necessary. Many people say: "I hate long sales letters. They don't work on me." Yes, they don't work on you, because you are not interested. If you were passionate, full of desire and hope, desperate to turn things around in your life, you'd hungrily read 87 pages of anything that promised to that for you. And, like any good thriller, once you finished 87 pages, you're still hungry for more. If you have just read a thriller, you're hungry for the new Alex Cross novel, but with the 87 page sales letter, you're ready to go ahead and purchase a $97 book. Can you write a letter that leaves a person that hungry to know more? [NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid area getting more practical about my general comments above with the other teachers and students in my ATSuccess group. You can join anytime to be part of our fruitful discussions.] How To Write Your Sales Letter - Part Three

In to-day's world of 10 second sound bytes, there is a strong sentiment to edit down your sales letter into it's essence. To write a short, simple and clean message, based on the incorrect premise that most person will consciously decide to come to your lessons or not. This idea of needing to get your message across quickly is only part of the truth. Your USP and Headline (which may or may not be the same) need this precision. Initially, research shows that an ad may have no more than few seconds to catch a person's attention before they move on to something else. So your message better be precisely targeted to the need of the person glancing at it. Only then can you get them to click on your link, read the next line, give you more of their time to listen to what you have to say. This condition continues - each line you write is as compelling as the last. Like Don Juan you must draw a person into your web, until they are spell bound and transfixed by your message. This is why long copy is essential. It is a process of seduction, during which you must speak into many of the unconscious drives that lead a person to make a decision. Today, any savvy marketer can rattle off this check list. However. Some of you may feel morally challenged by this proposition - isn't it contrary to the principles of our work? Aren't we in the business of waking people up? Isn't hypnotising them further to act in ways that are unconsciously preying on their deepest fears contrary to everything we intend to teach? Well, yes. It is. I have no magic answer to this question. I have debated it ad infinitum within myself, and with others in BodyChance, some of whom deplore the way I use this methodology to bring students into our business. This disgust is evident in some of responses that Alexander Technique teachers have to the way I am running my ATSuccess business. If you continue on this path - you will meet this disgust. It will become an issue for other people around you. As the Americans say: "There will be blow back." Are you ready for that? To bring deeper understanding and reconciliation within your Self, I recommend you read Dr. Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Now in it's 5th edition, Cialdini documents better than anyone I have read the simple fact that most decisions human beings make are not wilful decisions. Most of our decisions - which Alexander himself was at pains to point out - are unconsciously driven responses resulting from deep-wired biological drives built into the DNA of living. This is how it is - your opinion doesn't matter. Study after study shows that, while people declare they made a conscious decision to do a thing, research clearly indicates they were unconsciously influenced in ways they have no cognition of. Read Cialdini, his work is truly enlightening. Alexander covered the same ideas in a far less enlightening way, and without any evidentiary support, in Part I of Conscious Constructive Control of the Individual. Waking up gives us a responsibility. You do manipulate people unconsciously, not because you are manipulative person, but because human beings are wired that way. Most of their decisions will be emotionally driven - research is overwhelming on this point. A long sales letter takes people on this emotional journey. It convinces not by logic alone, but by a combination of logic and emotion. A sales letter is a means of unconsciously influencing a person in a conscious way to make a decision that is in both of your self-interests. It is Eugene O'Neill flipped. It's A Long Night's Journey Into Day. NEXT: The Savvy Marketer's Check List For An Effective Sales Letter