Posted by: Clayton Makepeace
November 12, 2007
Issue #279

From Zero to Hero in Record Time

• How to hone your copy skills to razor sharpness in no time flat …
• How business owners and marketing pros can get better sales copy faster …
• And much, Much MORE!

Dear Business Builder,

This issue will make you money if you’ll let it …

If you’re a copywriter, the secrets I’m about to reveal will help you grow your skills faster – and prime you for plumb assignments from Agora Publishing and every one of its competitors.

And if you’re a business owner or marketing exec, you’re going to discover a better way to work with your writers – or even create a world-class in-house copywriting team from scratch – and get better copy faster than you may now believe possible.

What’s that you say? “Not a bad way to spend the next five minutes or so?”

Great! Here goes …

A year ago, my agency – Response Ink – signed a contract to take over in-house marketing for a financial client. In the past ten months, his sales are up 80%. By the end of the year, I’m sure we’ll have doubled his 2006 revenues and profits.

Unsurprisingly, the client now wants us to take over his online and offline customer acquisition marketing as well – so we just signed a new contract with him.

Plus, another, much larger national firm (sorry – can’t tell you who quite yet) has asked us to take them on in 2008. This company is a sales explosion waiting to happen. I know precisely what’s needed to light the fuse for them. What’s more, I genuinely love this company. Heck: I’ve been a customer for more than 34 years!

But our little office building downtown was pretty much standing room only. So a few months ago, The Redhead found us a much larger building, got it remodeled and moved us in.

Now, with the New Year rapidly approaching, we’re facing the task of recruiting and training a passel of new copywriters, designers and other marketing folk to accommodate our growing client list.

And so, I’m approaching 2008 with fear and trembling. Because the fact is, training copywriters and designers – getting them to the point where they’re making me money and not merely slowing me down and costing me money – is a pain in the patootie.

Plus, I’m not very good at it these days. I just don’t have the time or the energy or the patience to spend hours digging for buried leads … juggling organizational jumbles … clarifying tangled, confusing paragraphs … bringing credibility to unbelievable ones … or breathing life into brain-dead boring ones.

Sometimes, the breakthrough you need
comes along just when you need it most …

About three weeks ago, a friend called to say there’s a new gun in town: A new copy chief at Agora who’s the best they’ve ever had.

So far, this wunderkind has recruited, trained and is now managing 14 writers! And not only that, his “fearsome fourteen” are actually cranking out winning promotions both on the web and in direct mail!

My god – 14 writers! Just bringing along ONE new writer is enough to make me yearn for the sweet relief of death. But 14? Holey moley! This guy must be some kind of superman!

Now, as I’ve said a gazillion times before in these pages, great sales copy is the ONE scarce resource – the ONE barrier to growth – for every direct response company in existence.

Products? They’re easy – like Joe Sugarman told me the other day, “Just look for something everyone needs.”

… But if you can find a way to quickly and efficiently turn a pizza delivery boy into a winning copywriter – which, according to my friend, this amazing young copy chief has actually done – there’s no limit to how fast or how big your company (or more to the point, MY company J) can grow.

“I gotta meet this guy,” says I.

Turns out I already had. His name is Mike Palmer and over a year ago, Mike and Greg Grillot – another superstar in the Agora constellation – came down to my little corner of Appalachia just to hang out with me for a couple of days.

So I didn’t figure that Mike would refuse to allow me to interview him for our EasyWriters Marketing Club members – especially if I asked him real nice.

But would he be willing to reveal precisely – step by step – how he finds, recruits, trains and manages his writers?

Most guys wouldn’t be. After all: Most of Agora’s biggest competitors are EasyWriters!

But I had an ace up my sleeve. See, I know that every company’s culture is a direct reflection of the owner’s personality and philosophy.

Agora is Bill Bonner’s company. Bill Bonner is scary smart. Bill is also generous to a fault. He knows that when he helps his competitors, they grow. When their mailing lists get bigger, there are more names of qualified prospects for Bill to rent. That means Bill’s company grows faster.

That’s why every single time I’ve asked one of Agora’s leading lights to share his or her most effective business-building, response-boosting secrets with you, they’ve quickly and cheerfully agreed.

They get it.

So when I asked Mike Palmer to tell me in painstaking detail how he’s cranking out great new writers faster than Carter’s cranks out little liver pills, he said, “Sure!”

Now, if you’re expecting me to reveal all of Mike’s secrets here, you’ve got another thing coming. My EasyWriters will be getting the CD of that interview in a few days … they paid good money to get it … and they’d have every reason to oust me as Head Honcho if I gave away the farm for free.

But I can give you some hints. More than that; I can give you the philosophy behind Mike’s approach – a philosophy that is too often lost in the day-to-day, rough-and-tumble, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, free-for-all we like to call “doing binness.”

Now, before I tell you the right way – how Mike does it – let me tell you the wrong way: The way I’ve been doing it …

From Dumb Copy Chief to Smart Copy Chief
in 60 Minutes Flat

My philosophy has always been to hire writers who show me some decent samples, then throw them into the deep end – giving them their first assignment their first day on the job.

It’s not that I figure they’ll either sink or swim; I know they’re going to sink. And I know the job is going to take four or five times longer than if I’d written it myself – and that in the end, I’m probably going to have to pretty much write it myself anyway.
My hope though, is that the copywriter will learn volumes from the experience and that each succeeding project will take fewer drafts and less of my time.

Doesn’t work that way. For most new writers, seeing the river of red cyber-ink on his or her beloved draft (I mark it up with change tracking on), is a killer. Some just figure, “What’s the point? Clayton’s going to re-write this whole thing anyway.” And I end up with a frustrated, disillusioned employee on my hands.

Mike’s genius is in finding a way to make his writers gain confidence and skill with each draft by requiring them to meet challenges the copy poses themselves. And he does that by bringing structure and simplicity to the training process.

Mike begins by paying his trainees not to write for their first couple of weeks on the job. Instead, he pays them to read.

For ten glorious workdays – and hopefully for fourteen nights and three weekends – Mike’s copy cubs are required to immerse themselves in The Masters. They must, of course, devour Michael Masteron’s AWAI copywriting course. And by the end of two weeks, they’re able to cite Hopkins, Caples, Schwab, Ogilvy and Gene Schwartz chapter and verse.

Much better – right?

Next, Mike simplified and brings simplicity and structure to the review process. He identified two critical things his cubs’ headlines must do – and the one job that their opening copy must accomplish.

He then gives each new writer an assignment, asking that they write ONLY the headline and first couple of pages of copy. And he tells them that before they’ll be allowed to write the rest of the promotion, these two or three pages must glisten.

The review process is a beautiful thing. In a quick 30- or 40-minute meeting each week, a panel of experienced writers meets with Mike and the new writer. Mike and each member of his review panel rates how well the work accomplishes the stated objectives on a scale of one to four.

If the headline and/or the opening copy scores less than a three, the copy cub is sent back to his or her cubicle – with the review panel’s comments and suggestions in hand – to take another crack at it. If the copy is a three or better, it passes muster and the writer is allowed to complete his first draft and submit a copy to each member of the review panel before his next copy review.

Here again, Mike has made things blindingly simple. He has identified three common problems most drafts share – and asks his reviewers to tag any guilty sentence or paragraph with a letter that identifies the crime. Once again, it’s up to the writer to solve the problem.

And when the final copy passes muster and begins spinning off money like crazy, Bill Bonner, Mike Palmer and the copy cub divvy up the profits. That’s right; copy cubs can earn royalties at Agora.

The genius of this approach is that it demands that new writers meet their own challenges and solve their own problems. And I also love the fact that while Mike’s approach leverages the experience and genius of senior writers, it requires them to spend only a few hours a week helping new writers along. They’re freed senior writers to spend most of their time writing their own copy – and making themselves (and everyone else in the food chain) richer.

Brilliant, no?

If you’re a copywriter, why not find yourself a few buddies (online copywriting forums are great for this) and create your own copy review committee?

Doesn’t matter whether they’re in your home town or on the other side of the planet – you can do this over the Web. You can do it cheap through e-mails, or you can invest a few shekels and use www.gotomeeting.com so you can all be looking at the same parts of each draft as you crit it.

If you’re a business owner or marketing exec, you can use Mike’s brainstorm, too. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t know the first thing about copy. Just talk a couple of senior freelancers into participating in return for a share of the royalties the cubs’ copy earns.

Hope this helps …

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

P.S. Oh, by the way. Did I mentioned that Uncle Bonner Wants YOU? If you’re looking for a way to make good money working with some of the very best direct response copywriters on the planet, I can’t think of a better way than to spend a couple of years in Baltimore with Mike Palmer and his group.

If you’re interested, drop Mike a line at mpalmer@stansberryresearch.com.

P.P.S. Want the audio CD of the entire Mike Palmer interview? Just join my EasyWriters now and it’ll be winging its way to you in a few days. Just click here.

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1 Comment »

1. Comment by Markus Trauernicht — November 12, 2007 @ 11:42 am

   I really get jealous when I hear how Agora works together with copywriters in the USA. The first salesletter I wrote for a client was for a subsidiary of Agora in Germany, after they had recently asked me to write a salesletter for them. But no royalties. Only a flat fee when I beat the control. I beat the control and now I see that same salesletter, knowing I could definitely improve it easily. It could have been far more of a WIN-WIN. And payments are no comparison to the USA.

   The standard directmail salesletter in Germany is half a page to barely one page long. Mostly all about features, no benefits. Seems like directmarketing over here is many years behind. Probably I will translate my current assignment (private-equity-investing) for a Swiss company into English as a speculative assignment when it is finished and start concentrating on clients in the USA.

   It just amazes me how directmarketing companies work closely with copywriters in your country. Even listbuilding is a drag over here, as listsharing is so contradictory to the German or European mentality.

   Regards
   Markus Trauernicht from Berlin