How To Turn Lots of Small “Yesses” Into One Big “YES”

Creating a compelling sales letter or ad can be looked at as turning lots of small “yeses” into one big “YES!” That big “YES!” being an order for your product or service. Here’s how this works.

Just as in direct sales, you want to get the prospect to start agreeing with you early on. You start off by building rapport, which makes them more agreeable with you. Then you utilize various questioning strategies to get them to nod their head in agreement or verbally state that they agree with you so far.

And you keep pursuing that agreement, asking questions to make sure the two of you are on the same page until you ask for the order.

You see human beings are hard-wired to agree to something after they’ve made a minor commitment to it. So if you can get small commitments of yes throughout the sales process, getting the final yes to buy your product becomes easier. So how does this play out in sales letters, landing pages and ads?

First off, your headline needs to tie into a desire they already have. In the opening of your ad, you want to promote and build on trust and rapport and you do that by using a testimonial, a credibility-building picture, or copy that explains that you understand their situation – that you are like them.

You always start off from where they already agree with you and build on that. In the body copy you insert leading questions to further build that agreement. Here’s an example:

• “Isn’t it important to maximize your productivity?”
• “Wouldn’t you like to lose weight without the diets?”
• “Cutting costs by 15% would be helpful wouldn’t it?”

I must add that you don’t want to overload your ad or sales letter with too many questions like this or it’ll appear contrived. Just a few questions like this spaced throughout the copy of the ad will aid in developing a “Yes Momentum”.

You also develop that “Yes Momentum” by making statements that people have heard before and already believe – called “truisms”. For example:

• “You’ve got to spend money to make money.”
• “You get what you pay for.”
• “A penny earned is a penny saved.”

If you’re writing an especially long ad, or sales letter you may want to insert one of these leading questions or truisms right before you ask for the sale. The idea being that they agree with that statement and they’re already in that frame of mind at that moment right when the next sentence comes up which is asking for the order.

– Mike