How to Pitch Without Being Pushy

It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder guy here again with another McMethod video session. Today in this video, I want to talk about a common mistake that I’m seeing a lot with otherwise good copywriters, people who’ve learned how to write an email. That means email should be conversational. You’re looking at one to two sentences per paragraph. Some paragraphs are going to have one sentence, one line or even one word. I’ve done this. Once people get that, that’s just the first step. They’re doing well, but they often make a mistake.

This surprised me when I first started seeing it. I’ve been seeing this with coaching clients recently. This is where they’ve got the conversational part down pat. They can tell stories. They can have fun with it. They can write a good email, but then when it comes to pitch, when it comes time to say, ” I have a product, here’s why you should buy,” is they fumble it. I’ve seen this with … I’ve just done some work with a client who has a huge sales following. They’re driving a ton of traffic at it. They have this problem. Some of the emails are great, right, usually when they’re not pitching, but when it comes time to pitch, they focus all on the pitch, on the offer. “Here’s why we’re so amazing. Here’s why this product is so great. Here’s why this offer is just incredible.” They forget. They really drop the ball. They forget to address the “what’s in it for me.” This mistake, if you want to boil it down, it’s failing to answer this question of: What’s in it for me? When you write an email, especially when you write a pitch, and this is what I’m talking about in here, is the mistake really shows up when it comes time to pitch.

If you’re going to pitch before you can say, “We have a promo,” or “Here’s the product, it’s four DVDs,” or whatever it happens to be, you have to explain why your prospects should even care. The product doesn’t matter; the offer doesn’t matter. The $1 trial, the frequently asked questions, whatever the way you frame me up, none of that matters unless the person already believes that you can help him. All of that only matters in the context that you can solve their problem. Until you sell them on the idea, until you convince your prospects, your subscriber, that you can solve their problem, they’re not going to give a damn about some $1 trial or about the product or any of that sort of stuff. When it comes to the pitch, if you want to avoid this mistake, you have to learn to pitch. I hate to say this, but it’s like pitching without pitching or it’s just that most people pitch, but I have no idea how to pitch so they are really pitching without pitching.

The way I do it and the way you should do it is you should pitch the right way, which is instead of saying, “Hey, John, I’ve got this great offer today. It’s a $1 trial, you’re going to love it. Here’s a link. Go buy it right now.” Instead, I say something like, “Hey, John, do you really hate writing emails?” “It’s really hard. It’s difficult. You’ve got to learn how to do it, then you doubt yourself, you sit staring at the cursor and bla bla bla.” “Well, how would you like this? One tiny little magic button you could press and it churns out emails that generate millions of dollars in revenue just like that. If you’re interested in something like that, if that sounds good to you, here’s a link and guess what, it’s actually available today for $1. I’ll let you in. I’ll give you access for just $1. It’s just a really cool deal.” Then you click over there like that.

The difference is before I did the pitch, before I told them, “Here’s the product. Go buy,” I had a few sentences just about the benefit. Try to tap into the subscriber like, “Hey, John, do you really hate writing emails?” That’s a fictitious product. I don’t sell that. No one ever would. There is no such thing as a magic button solution. That was just an example. That’s it for now. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder guy and you’re watching the McMethod video sessions.