Clayton Makepeace’s latest ‘Total Package’ article is titled “The Eye of the Tiger”. [Article]


Clayton Makepeace’s latest ‘Total Package’ article:

The Eye of the Tiger

Dear Business-Builder,

My dad was old-school all the way. As a male chauvinist of epic proportions, he firmly believed that men were created to give orders and that women and children were created to take them.

And because Mom was an old-fashioned gal, she was pretty much OK with that.

And by “pretty much,” I really mean, “NOT AT ALL.”

Sure – she’d follow Dad’s lead so long as she agreed with him. When she didn’t agree, Mom used what she called “psychology” on him, exercising copious amounts of persuasion and a fair share of stealth tactics to get her way.

And every once-in-a-while, when all else failed, she’d get “that look” in her eye. There would be a certain inflection in her voice and a set to her jaw that made it clear to everyone – Dad included – who was really in charge. (What can I say? She was a redhead!)

I called that look “The Eye of The Tiger” – and whenever I saw it, I knew I was just one false move away from seeing a mild-mannered, middle-aged minister’s wife go ninja on my ass.

And I will be forever grateful that I inherited that look – or at least the attitude that goes along with it – from dear old Mom.

Because that mind-set has made me a ton of money over the years – especially after I’ve been punked in a heads-up test against another writer.

While others may sulk or question their talent after being told their sales copy has been beaten, I just get that set to my jaw, that tone in my voice and that look in my eye that says, “No way am I going to let this stand!”

It happened just last week …
Now, no excuses, but I generally have about one day to write a sales page – not much time, considering each one is the equivalent of 14 to 24 pages in a Word document. But I usually have no choice: I have to be fast on my feet; my financial client often changes product or offer strategy on me several times each week.

Nevertheless, last week, we had a rare opportunity to test sales copy that a team of outside writers had created – and that I’m sure took much longer to write – against one of my 24-hour wonders.

I got punked. I mean spanked. Real bad. The other guys’ copy generated nearly two dollars in revenues for every one dollar my copy raked in.

It was humiliating. But instead of getting defensive or sulking, I got “the eye of the tiger.” Come Hell or high water, I was going to return the favor – produce a promotion that left the challenger in the dust – or die trying.

So, I settled down and studied the new copy to try to figure out why it worked so well and quickly found lots of reasons. For one, it gleefully violated several iron-clad rules the client had placed on my copy. For another, it did a better job of dealing with objections our prospects probably had than my copy did. And for another, it did a better job of parsing my client’s track record than I had done in my copy.

So I cleared the decks and spent a good four hours rewriting my sales page in ways I believed did all these things better. I would have liked to have had at least a full day, but we had to send the e-mail that afternoon so we could split test my new copy against the challenger.

Result: My new copy produced 50% more revenue than the challenger and 2.7 times greater revenue than my old copy had generated.

Now, I could have settled for that vindication and moved on to other projects. But I’m not used to being beaten; I couldn’t leave it alone.

So the next day, I tweaked my new copy a bit more and we ran a second split test – and lo and behold, my copy produced three times greater response than the challenger and more than SIX TIMES more money than my old copy had.

At that point, the client and I figured that further split tests against the challenger’s copy were unnecessary. But still, I was just getting warmed up; I spent a full day to create a second version of my own copy to test against our new control.

I just put the finishing touches on that new test panel copy this morning ““ I’ll let you know how it does next week.

So what’s the moral of the story? I count three …

Moral #1: Everybody gets punked. If it happens to me after 37 years of doing this, it’ll happen to you, too.

When you’re writing for the same product for months at a time – and making millions for the client every month – it’s easy to get into a rut; to fall back on tried and true strategies and tactics and to sleepwalk through certain essential parts of the project.

Going the extra mile; taking the extra time to think through each critical part of your project – no matter how many times you’ve written about the product at hand – is the ONLY way to make sure that never happens.

Moral #2: Stay curious. While some writers struggle with insecurity, others are plagued by overconfidence. They do their best and then have so much confidence in their work that they fail to learn from work done by others.

See, when you read a promotion written by somebody else, you can approach it in one of three ways:

You can approach it in awe, feeling intimidated by the reputation of the writer or the sales campaign.

You can approach it with disdain – assuming that since you didn’t write it, it must be second-rate.

Or, you can approach it with an open mind, ready, willing and eager to learn anything you can from it.

I strongly suggest that the third approach is the only rational way to go.

Moral #3: Getting beat is what you make of it. Losing in a test is a neutral event. It’s what you do with that defeat that matters.

If you accept your defeat as confirmation of your incompetence and give up, it’s a failure. But if you develop the eye of the tiger – USE the defeat to learn everything you can, then come back with something better, you can snatch triumph from the jaws of humiliation.

And the money ain’t bad, either. Thanks to this little exercise, my royalties will be six times more than they would have been if I hadn’t been shaken out of my cocky complacency!

Hope this helps …

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace

Publisher & Editor

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Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

*IMNewsWatch would like to thank Clayton Makepeace for granting permission to reprint this article.

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