Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

Oh man - want to talk about painful copy reviews?

Six months ago, I was going through a particularly tedious copy review for a client who insisted I remove every mention of the words “But” and “However” from a salesletter.

Just removing two words would mean the whole sales copy had to be re-written.

No, she wasn’t suffering from some form of obsessive compulsive disorder… And she wasn’t exerting some sick managerial dominance over this little hired-gun copywriter.

And it wasn’t as crazy as it sounded…

The client was a particularly skilled and effective NLP-trained salesperson.

I remember watching in awe as she closed a sale which I thought had no chance of going through. Another salesperson had already addressed all his concerns, and tried every trick in the book… before SHE casually strolled up.

It was as if she was using Obi-Wan Kenobi style Jedi mind tricks on this guy. One moment he’s got every excuse under the sun for why he shouldn’t buy, the next he was filling his credit card details at the bottom of an order form!

So she definitely knew how to sell!…

…and she had a very specific reason why she wanted to remove every instance of the word “But”.

In fact, I heard the same reason mentioned in an audio product on Persuasive Selling Techniques which I’m writing a salesletter for right now (a completely unrelated client!).

So what’s all this deathly fear about the word “but” about?

The reason these really effective salespeople have a deathly fear about the word “But” is because they’ve been through NLP (Neuro-Linguisting Programming) training.

If you ask an NLP practitioner, they’ll tell you that “But” and “However” are killer words. They negate or take significance away from the words which come before them.
For example….

“He’s wealthy, but as dumb as a box of hammers.” or;

“That’s a great idea but maybe you should bring it up at the board meeting.”

And a big one (if you’re in sales) is this…

If a salesperson answers one of your objections with “Yes, but…” it means they haven’t taken what you had to say on board.

“Yes this watch is expensive, but it’s made by Rolex - and it’s one of the finest timepieces in the world.”

This is where NLP practitioners have it right.. The word “But” can be an indication that you’re not truly listening to the customer.

BUT!… This doesn’t mean you should remove the word from your copy completely.

It’s far too valuable to avoid completely - because sometimes you DO want to negate something you’ve just said….

Classic examples of where “but” works well in sales copywriting include:

Price Justifications - “Similar Widgets sell in stores for over $700, but this Widget can be yours for just $149.95!”;

Addressing Critical Flaws - “Of course this book won’t make you a rock-star overnight - but it will give you the ‘insider’ secrets which have helped hundreds of bands get discovered, important insights on blah blah blah”;

Showing Scarcity - “..but be quick - my warehouse manager tells me that we only have enough stock to last us until the end of the week…”

My Tip on using the word “But” as a Copywriter:
The #1 thing you should do is make sure you don’t use the word “but” too much in the early paragraphs of a salesletter… Or too regularly throughout your sales copy.

If you use the word “but” any more than once in your opening paragraphs, then you’ve probably got a whole bunch of useless junk in there which you can get rid of.

If this is you.. then my advice is Slash and Burn Baby!

Cut the useless junk, get to the pitch faster, and you’ll have a heap more paying customers who will thank you for it!

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