Make Yourself Useful

“Patience can’t be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle.
Every day you need to work on it.”
–Eknath Easwaran, meditation teacher,
founder Blue Mountain Center of Meditation
and Nilgiri PressHannah More, Evangelical Philanthropist

In This Issue:

Make Yourself Useful
by Monica Day

One of the participants in the Copy Protégé Mentoring Program has been trying to connect with one of his dream clients for almost a year. He’s gotten close a couple of times, and I feel convinced that he’s about to bag his first assignment from them. He has a lot of things working in his favor…

1) He lives near them, which is unusual in this business.

2) He’s on their radar – he played email tag with their marketing manager and now he’s been playing phone tag with the head honcho.

3) He’s been patient and yet persistent for months.

4) He hasn’t been sitting around waiting, though. He has other clients, a control under his belt, and is getting better as a copywriter every day. So when the call finally comes, he’ll be ready.

5) The client is actively looking for both in-house and freelance copywriters.

Recently, as he felt he was finally getting close to having the call, he sent me this email:

Any advice you could send my way as to an approach with <the client> when she calls would be appreciated. My thinking is to try and convince her to use me somehow on a freelance basis, as opposed to a full-time in-house copywriter. Since I’m local to their office, I could be available to face-to-face meetings as required. Let me know what you think and thanks again.

Now…before you read my answer to him, take a minute and think about what you would advise him to do. What’s wrong with this approach? What would you do differently?

OK, ready? Here goes:

Monica’s response: I think you’d do better to listen to her proposal and see what she might have to offer before you try to convince her of anything. Ask lots of questions. And then, tell her you’ll think about it — whatever it is. Then, once you know more about what she needs and is looking for, go home and craft a proposal that might meet both your needs. Good luck!

Our protégé was about to skip the number one rule we’ve all learned as copywriters’ in one of the most important business transactions in his career so far – understand your target prospect!

Instead, he was about to jump in to the conversation with the idea of getting his needs met…without listening first to what his prospect needs.

Big mistake. And a very fast way to lose what could be the biggest break in his career.

When you are trying to make a connection with someone – whether it’s for a job or to make a networking connection or to approach a possible client – you have to forget about yourself and focus on what you can do for the other person. Ultimately, if you fulfill their needs, the odds of meeting your own increases dramatically.

It’s one of the hardest things to learn when you’re just starting a new business. Maybe because it’s counter-intuitive. But it works.

Let me give you another example…this one comes from a new CP reader. Brand new – like just one week old in this business!

Now, Krista and I get our fair share of email…and we try our best to answer them all. But this one stood out. It uses one of the best networking techniques you have at your disposal. Again, let’s see if you can figure out what it is when you read it…

I am a new student of AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting and I am so excited to be a part of this amazing opportunity!!

Krista, in the original AWAI promo offer I was proud to see a fellow Georgian win the 10K challenge. I was very interested in hearing your advice in the newsletter copyprotege.com, and I was impressed by all the insights "ya’ll" two gals had to offer.

I have an idea that I would like to share with you both. How about a third perspective in your newsletter from someone who is taking the course from the very first lesson? I believe it would be beneficial to students in the program to see a person grow and evolve as each lesson is completed, doesn’t this sound good to you?

This could be an example of content in the newsletter…

And then she proceeded to send along a 500-word sample of her first journal entry!

What this reader has just demonstrated, perhaps unwittingly, is the best possible approach to meeting a potential new client or networking contact. She didn’t just introduce herself, tell us how excited she is, and then ask for our advice. She made herself useful to us instead. And you can bet that if we take her up on her offer – which we might – she’ll have the inside track to our attention and feedback on her writing.

You see, content is every ezine editor’s dream – especially free content. I’m not sure if the reader knew that, or if it was just a stroke of good luck and intuition. But it was the perfect suggestion, made in just the right way, at just the right time. Plus, she made it easy for us to respond. For example, she could have pitched her idea without sending the sample and we might still have found it interesting…but it would have entailed more effort on our part.

Instead, her approach was short and sweet, and she sent the goods. Like Goldilocks looking for a bed for her nap…this reader got it just right…

Of course, there’s no guarantee that an approach like this will be so well-timed or appropriate. It’s the luck of the draw. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying. I guarantee the person on the other end will be a lot more likely to remember you and feel favorably towards you if you extend a helping hand to them before you hold out your hand and ask them for something.

Resource Referral: Archives Now Available

I’m very pleased to introduce you to the new Copy Protégé website www.copyprotege.com! For a while now, readers have been asking for access to our archives…and I’m happy to tell you that you can now find most of them on the website. At least the last 60 or so.

And for archives from the early, early days – when we were just taking this concept out for a test drive – we’ll be issuing a free report of those first issues very soon. Maybe even to celebrate our upcoming 100th issue if we can pull it off. Or very soon thereafter.

Hard to believe. This ezine is growing up faster than my children. Thank goodness!

P.S. Be sure to check out the Resource Referral sections in the archives. We’ve tried to find products, services, books and other useful resources that can really help you on your way – and that aren’t full of smoke and mirrors. Check them out when you peruse the archives on the new site.

Quick Copywriting Tip: Building Muscle

I’m in week ten of a recovery and rehabilitation program after foot surgery…and am learning big lessons every day. About patience. About control. About determination.

And it seems like every single lesson applies to your (and my) copywriting career.

Today’s lesson: Building your copywriting skills is no different from building up a muscle. You have to work at it a little bit every single day. You can’t quit when it hurts. You can’t give up. And you can’t push it faster than it wants to go.

Trust me. After 10 weeks of being in a cast, I have this pathetic little calf muscle on my left leg…and very little Achilles tendon to work it with. It will take three or four times as long to get it back as it took to lose it. And it’s completely up to me. My physical therapist can’t do it for me. Neither can my doctor. I either get it back myself – or I give it up.

Same is true with your writing career. AWAI can’t do it for you. Neither can your spouse or a friend (even one in the business). At the end of the day, it’s a battle between you and your laptop. You build your writing muscle by writing every day. Or you let that muscle atrophy. It’s that simple.

Which is it going to be?