problem

I've had two calls with potential clients this week, and I noticed a similarity between both of them that I wanted to share.

It's a simple way to demonstrate your expertise and sell your services...

Without actually selling your services at all.

The first call was with a guy who runs a media buying agency.

They're wanting to bring in copywriters outside their team to help brainstorm "big ideas" for their client's ads.

The problem they're having is that their copywriters are getting burnt out.

They're churning out ads day after day...

But they can't beat any of the controls they've written in the past.

They're chasing a dangling carrot that never seems to get any closer.

I've been in this position before. Creating ad after ad...

But never "hitting the jackpot" with a runaway winner.

It's exhausting.

So I empathized with the guy on our call.

I told him I knew what that felt like, and asked some questions about their current ads.

I showed that I understood the problem. And I asked intelligent questions.

The second call was with a guy who is looking to earn more money from his email list.

He has a small, but growing list. He's launching a course this summer. And he's wanting to do more storytelling with his emails.

This is the type of project that makes me salivate.

Not literally. Well, at least not that much.

Anyway, we get on the call, and I ask him questions about what he's doing currently.

How he's getting people onto the list...

What his current Welcome Sequence looks like...

How it's performing...

Pricing for his upcoming product...

Etc.

Then he asks me questions about what I would recommend for his situation.

I told him...

And then I told him what it would look like to work with me to accomplish those things.

I would love to end this email by saying that I have money in my bank account from both of these guys right now...

But I don't.

It's still too early to say whether either of these calls will turn into paid projects. Both of the calls went well, and both projects seem promising, but I don't count my chickens before they hatch...

And I don't have money in my bank account from either of these guys yet.

So we'll see what happens.

Nonetheless, I wanted to share these examples, because they brought to mind an important marketing principle that my friend Greg Wilnau reminded me of recently:

If you can show someone you understand their problem better than they do...

They will trust your solution to that problem.

That's how you sell your services without really selling your services.

Robert