Copyright 2006 Willie Crawford

One of my favorite copywriting models is the "problem, agitate, solution" model. This is where you show your prospects that they have a nagging, painful, problem. Then you describe in excruciating detail why it really IS a problem that they desperately want to solve. Finally, you point out to them why your product is the perfect solution.

My friend Stephen Pierce, and several mentors, showed me that nothing is more powerful in marketing than PROOF. This lead me to observe how effective it is to use the next logical step, which is...

Prove to them that they really do have a problem by actually stepping them through experiencing the pain.

Let me give you a few quick example so that you can see how this is used very effectively.

Back when free-for-all (ffa) links pages were very popular, there were companies that would provide your with a page containing links to the submission pages of hundreds of sites. They showed you exactly where to go to manually fill in the forms on these sites to get a free link pointing back to your site. After every 25 or so listings, they would have a link offering access to their automated submission software.

Many people were thrilled to find the URLs of these submission pages all in one place, and they set about gleefully submitting their site to the ffa pages. However, after doing this for an hour or so, they soon realized how tedious this was. The light bulb suddenly came on, and they realize that manually submitting to hundreds, even thousands of sites would take DAYS. Then, paying a few dollars to do this using an automated system seemed very inexpensive.

The company offering the automated submission service had proven the VALUE of their service.

The same model has been used in the article submission business. A company will give you a page containing the actual link to the submission pages of hundreds of article directories and ezine publishers who accept articles. Site visitors/authors who industriously set about manually submitting their articles to hundreds of places soon realize that this was a very poor use of their time. So they gleefully pay $20 or so to have their articles automatically, or semi-automatically, submitted to hundreds of sites.

If you look around, you'll see this model being used over and over again. In-fact, to sell many services all you need to do is tell them EXACTLY, step-by-step, how to do it. If your step-by- step instructions are detailed enough, it will seem very tedious, and many people will want to hire YOU to do it. If you also offer an automated way to do this, or offer to do this for them through your company, they will use you to do it.

This is an incredibly effective method of selling your products and services. Take a close look at your products today. Can you structure your sales process so that you demonstrate (prove) the value of using YOU to do it instead of the customer doing it themselves. If you can, you should witness a substantial improvement in sales when you do. The whole key is just letting them actually experience how painful it is for them to do it themselves. It's a proven model used by countless very successful companies :-)