Sales Pages?The Problem With The First Few Paragraphs - a podcast by Sean DSouza

Most of us make a fundamental mistake when dealing with the first few paragraphs. We put too many problems in, right away. And it's a mistake. A big mistake! It's like an air traffic controller letting three planes land on the same runway. So how do we avoid this problem? And is the problem over once the "plane" lands? Or is there more to worry about? 

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Sean D'Souza:Imagine you are an air traffic controller and you've got three planes circling the airport. Are you going to land all three at once? 

Hi. This is Sean D'Souza from the Three Month Vacation. Today, we're going to be talking about how you need to dwell on a single problem instead of several problems when you're writing a sales page. Now why would a sales page be critical to you and how would it be connected to a three-month vacation? It doesn't matter who you are. At some point in time, you're going to have to follow the three-prong system. If you haven't done so, listen to episode number two, where I outline the three-prong system. It is a system that has run for pretty much thousands of years, and it's based on three core concepts, which is creating products, services, and training. 

Today, we're trying to sell either a workshop, which is training, or a service or a product and you're trying to write a sales page. You know that once you write that sales page and once you sell that product, service, or training, it generates income and clients, and then you get to go on your three-month vacation. Even as you're sitting there, you're trying to land three planes, and that's a mistake. I don't have to tell you it's a mistake. You already know it's a mistake. You know it's a mistake when you're trying to land three planes, but the moment you get onto the sales page, all hell breaks loose. How do we prevent this from happening? How do we land a single plane at a time? If you follow this podcast, you know that we have three topics that we cover and then an action plan. What are those three topics that we're going to cover today? 

The first thing we're going to do is we're going to look at the problem and how these problems seem to circle the airport and how we have to land them one at a time. The second thing is once they land, what are we going to do with them? The third thing is when do we give them a break? When do we get to the solution? Let's look at these three and see how we can get this sales page to really work for us so that we can start to sell our products, services, and our training. 

The moment you sit down to write a sales page, you have to focus on the biggest problems that you're solving. It doesn't matter whether you have a product or service, you are solving a bunch of problems and this is where you run into a dilemma. Any product or service that you're selling is going to solve several problems, and you're going to feel like you have to stack them all together. When you go to some sales pages, what you find is you won't find a single problem that they're dealing with. You will find that they put in problem number one, problem number two, problem number three, problem number four, problem number five. Then they ask you, "Are you having any of these problems?" That sounds like five planes circling the airport and you're trying to land every single one of them. What should you do? 

What you should do is do what any air traffic controller would do; you land a single plane. For us to take this analogy home, we have to treat that plane as a priority, as if there were an emergency. Even if there were a dozen planes circling the airport, one plane has an emergency; it has to land right now. As an air traffic controller, you have to bring that plane down, and this is what you do. You find the biggest problem. How do you know it's the biggest problem? 

When you give your customer a list of the problems that you're solving, the customer will usually come back and say, "Okay. Out of these three problems, out of those five problems, this one, this is the biggest problem." You know it's their biggest problem and you know you're solving their biggest problem because if you said, "I'm not going to have this anymore. I'm not going to solve this problem anymore," they don't want your product or service. 

To illustrate this, let's take an example. Let's say you are selling a car to a mother, and she has four kids. Now she wants to buy the car because of fuel efficiency; she want to buy it because of style; she wants to buy it because of space. The car is solving three different problems, and if you were to take away one of them, say you take away space, say you said, "Let's get a smaller car. You'll still get style and fuel efficiency," and she says, "No. I need this because I need to take my kids to soccer practice, and I need to take them for music classes and stuff like that. I need to take all four of them." 

That's when you know you're solving the biggest problem, and that is one of space. Of course, she would like the style. Of course, she would like the fuel efficiency, but the space, that's the overriding problem. That is the first plane that you've got to land. Instead of dealing with all three problems or all the five problems, you actually drive home just one problem. Once you've done that, you've finished your first part. This takes us to the second part, which is you have to get the plane to the gate. This is very important. Most people think once you land the plane, there is nothing to do, but you know, there have been plane crashes after the plane has landed. That takes us to the second part. 

What do you do once that plane is landed? Here we are in the second part. Your plane has landed and it is taxiing towards the gate. What's happening at this point in time? At this point in time, you haven't gone away from that problem. Now, what you're doing is you're driving home the consequences. You're driving home the reason why they have to go ahead and what would fall apart if they didn't go ahead with that one problem. We're still on that one plane. The plane has landed. Now, in the second part what we're doing is we are making sure that the consequences are driven home. 

If we took that example of the woman buying the car, well, we would first bring up the problem of space. Then we would drive home the consequences of not having that space and how other cars seem to compensate on that space and how it becomes uncomfortable in the car. You're still talking about space and space and space and space, because you're getting that plane to the gate. You're doing this with the consequences of not making that decision, and because that is the one thing that is most crucial to the customer, that is the one thing that they are listening to. 

They want to know that you understand their problem and that you understand the consequences and you are giving them more depth. Those consequences that you're talking about, it's bringing more depth to them and they understand, "Yes, this is exactly what I want." What about those two other planes in the sky, the ones on style and fuel efficiency? You want to let them fly for awhile. Let them circle the airport. We're dealing with this one plane. We've landed it; we make sure that we get to the gate with the problem and with the consequences. 

At this point in time, we are itching to get across our solution, which is presenting the workshop, presenting the car, presenting the whatever you're selling, and you have to hang on. Those planes up in the sky, they're going to crash if you leave them alone, so you land the second plane, which is the second problem, and then you drive home the second set of consequences. Let them get to the gate, land the third plane, and at this point in time, you're ready to bring out the solution. This is when you get all those customers off the plane. You know how they rush off the plane? Your customer, reading your sales page, this is how they feel. They want to get off that plane right now. 

As air traffic controllers, what we've done is we made sure that we get one plane down, one problem, then we drive home the consequences, and then we've got them to the gate. All of them have got to the gate at the same time, the three problems and the three consequences, and then we can let them all off together. Now this is not what happens at regular airports, but bear with me. The analogy breaks a bit here, but what you want to do is you want to drive home all of those three problems and then, and only then, get the customers off the plane. This is where you announce it. You say, "Announcing the Article Writing Workshop," and you give them your solution. 

The analogy falls apart a bit towards the end, but to understand it, it's very simple. You have to make sure that you land one problem at a time, drive home the consequences; land the second problem, drive home the consequences; land the third problem, drive home the consequences. Then, and only then, do you bring your solution. 

Now do you have to have three problems before you bring home your solution? No, you don't. You could have just one problem. It could be just one plane circling the airport. You bring out that problem and then you drive home the consequences for the next three of four paragraphs, or you could have a couple of planes and you land the first one, drive home the consequences; land the second one, drive home the consequences. Get them all to the gate, then unload the whole lot together. Then get the solution. Really, that's the summary. The mistake that most people make is they're always trying to get too many things across, and it's like giving someone five instructions at the same time. You give them one instruction and they follow it. 

A very good example of just this one plane landing is on the article writing course. If you go onto psychotactics.com and search for the article writing course, you'll see that it's just about how to stop knocking on clients' doors and how to get them to call you instead. It goes about just talking about the consequences of knocking on clients' doors, how it's so hard to get business every time you have to knock on them and how clients tend to put off the purchase and how articles then help you sneak in the side door. It takes awhile before that plane gets to the gate, and that's really what you want to do. You want to drive home those consequences. You want to get to the next problem, drive home those consequences. 

On this article writing course page, you will see that the next problem comes up as well, which is, "Hey, the competition can write articles, too, can't they?" That's the second problem, and then the consequences are driven home. Then the third one, which is, "But my articles are boring." Then we're talking about how you can be entertaining with your articles. We have three big problems before we say, "Announcing the article writing course." 

You already have the summary, but let me give you some steps here. What are you going to do? You really want to look at all the problems that you're solving. Now you can do this yourself sitting at your desk and banging your head against the computer, or you can go to a client, take them to lunch and ask them the problems that they're facing and they will give you a whole list of them. Then in step two, you get them to rank it. They'll tell you which is their biggest problem, second biggest problem, third problem. You've got three planes; that's enough. I'll tell you what to do with the rest later. 

Now, you've got those three planes. Now, you have to get the consequences of the client not acting on those three problems. Ask the client. Ask them, "What would be the consequence of not dealing with this issue?" They will tell you, and you just record it. Don't even write it down; record it and transcribe it. You now have a situation where you've got the problems, the whole list of problems. You've got a ranking, and the client has given you the consequences of them not acting on it. You really don't have to do any copywriting. Then you ask the client what their solution would be like, what would it look like? They will tell you, and then you get that down as well. 

What are you going to do with the rest of the problems? Supposing they came up with a list of seventeen problems. Put them in the bullets. Put them in your features and benefits. You don't have to have them all up there at the start of the page. Up there, you just have to deal with those two or three flights that are landing. 

Now, your sales page is focused. Now, your sales page is actually doing what it should be doing. This is why some sales pages work better than others. This is why some people sell more products and services than other people. This is why they go on vacations. Landing five planes or three planes or two planes, even, is a disaster. Land one plane at a time, drive home the consequence, get them to the gate, and then you've done a really good landing. It's funny that it's called a landing page, isn't it? I didn't think about it until right now. 

That brings us to the end of this episode, and this is Episode number thirty-two, so you know what that means, right? You can just go to psychotactics.com/32 and you'll find the transcript, you'll find other resources. Whatever you want out there, you can download it from there as well. You can also download it on iTunes or you can go to Stitcher if you're on android and you can listen to this. For members of www.5000bc.com, you can log in and we'll be having an interactive session where you can bring in your first problem, second problem, third problem, and we'll do an audit there. Bring it to 5000bc and let's solve this problem within 5000bc itself. 

If you're not part of 5000bc, you should get on the waiting list and pay your ten dollars. Yes, it's ten dollars to be on the waiting list. Then while you're waiting, you can read the Brain Audit, and it explains a lot of these concepts. The Brain Audit is available on the site at psychotactics.com/brain audit. If you have any feedback, really bad feedback, like not good stuff, or really good stuff, then write to me at sean@psychotactics.com. You can also write in for requests. If you have some question that you want to be answered, well, I can do this on the podcast. In fact, the last episode number thirty-one, that was a question that was sent in from Australia and we dealt with that in a reasonably long episode. It was twenty-three minutes, I think. There you go. Send in your questions as well, and I'll do my best to answer it. 

 

Hasta luego from the Three Month Vacation and psychotactics.com. Bye-bye. 

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