Jane,
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Vis a vis my precis of the presentation, I was rather under
the impression that I'd given a good case for problem
solving, consultative sales as opposed to pushy,
manipulative sales.
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You did indeed. My read is that you and I are traveling
in the same direction, but at different points along
the spectrum. You're exploring alternatives to hard
selling, I'm exploring alternatives to soft selling. I feel an
affinity with your quest.
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There is also nothing unethical about presenting my
absolutely best case to them.
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Yes, I agree. It's my fault for letting a moralistic tone infect
my posts. You're right to challenge that.
It's appears to be challenging to write about those
strategies that are proudly based on emotional manipulation
without a moralistic tone creeping in but, assuming a valid
product, web page copy isn't a moral issue. We all have the
right to type whatever we want on our pages. No one is
forced to read it.
Making one's best case with emotionally manipulative copy
(which isn't Jane's goal) isn't unethical, but it feels that
way to many of it's readers, thus introducing a technical
problem. If we want to sell widgets to Jane's brother, who
is allergic to anything that smells like a pitch, we just
have to find some other way to do it, that's all.
Maybe Jane's soft sell non-manipulative approach will do the
job.
Or maybe Jane's brother is so fed up with being emotionally
manipulated every time he turns around that we'll need to
abandon the whole concept of persuasion in order to win him
over.
Remember, every emotionally manipulative copy writer is hard
at work creating more fed up people like Jane's brother. We
can thank our emotionally manipulative brothers and sisters
for building this growing market for us!
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Thus far, I have not been good at motivating people to
"act now".
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Which makes you completely normal. So what's the solution?
My guess is that Mike was closing in on the answer when he
quoted Tom Myer as saying:
Quote:
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My first rule for writing good copy is to be authentic.
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Does this concept deserve a thread of it's own?
Phil