Sales Copy: The *Until Now* credibility technique

If you want to make it more compelling for your customer to choose your service or product, show them:

Why they haven’t been able to solve their problem before you showed up

It’s a subtle but effective technique which adds credibility to your product or service and responds to this possible objections from your customer:

But I’ve already tried X, Y and Z, what makes you think you can do any better?

Or:

Well how come this is available now when such a solution has always been out of reach for me?

In the first example, you’ll want to show that your product or service is not only different to those other solutions,  but more suited to the personality of your target market.

For example, let’s say you offer hypnosis to people who want to give up smoking. Other methods of stopping smoking include:

• Willpower (possibly induced by a negative goal such as guilt, fear or worry)
  
• Supportive literature which also require self-discipline
• Patches / drugs

Whilst these techniques might work for some people, there’s a good chance that your customers are coming to you because they haven’t worked, don’t think they’ll work for them, or don’t know about them. In all of those cases, to show that you are offering a credible solution, don’t ignore the competition, acknowledge the alternatives, and explain why they haven’t worked for your customer.

For example:

You might have tried will power, self-discipline or guilt to motivate you to stop smoking, and you probably know how frustrating and upsetting this can be. If self-discipline isn’t your strong point, and the idea of taking drugs turns you cold, hypnosis could be the perfect way to achieve long lasting change without pain, guilt, will power or drugs. You see, instead of just dealing with the symptom of “smoking”like most other techniques do, hypnosis is different, it actually goes back to the reason you started, and then helps you redesign new, more health and positive desires…

Now, it might be that your customer hasn’t tried any other methods, but there’s been some other barrier preventing them from solving their problem. These might be factors such as:

• Price
• Geography
• Lack of available knowledge

For example, let’s take an online business mentoring program. This is a perfect example of a service that has been out of reach to someone who couldn’t afford individual mentoring, couldn’t travel to see the business coach, or weren’t able to get the business coaching advice for free from that mentor anywhere else. If you’ve been able to smash through those barriers for your customer by creating an affordable online coaching program, you can definitely use the “until now” approach in your copy.

For example:

Look at any successful business owner and I’ll bet they credit a lot of their success to a mentor. Some were lucky enough to have worked for their mentors, some were able to afford to hire (at great expense) one-on-one time with their mentors, and others spent years pouring over their books and distance training materials trying to put their words into effect. But what if you’re not lucky enough to know your mentor personally? Or have the available income to hire them just for you? And what if you don’t have the luxury of trying to understand their words in print before you see results? Well now you can enjoy the benefits of an online coaching program with personal access to your mentor and their training resources, for less than the cost of a magazine subscription…

Think about your own product or service – what’s the “until now” elements that you can offer (and explain) to your customer in your copy?