If you read the literature in books or on the net, you know that people claim there are all sorts of tricks to sales writing.

But a recent visit to Branson, MO on the part of some friends of mine reminded me that it depends on how you define “trick.”

When you are a writer, you have great limitations. You can’t keep people in your presence for three hours, when you promised they would only have to listen to a two-hour presentation. You can’t watch a couple and find the weaker “link” in the chain of resistance and work on that person. You can’t develop strategies of deception so that, when a couple seems resistant to your initial offers, your partner suddenly comes into the room claiming that some new properties have unexpectedly opened up and, even though it is their normal practice to only offer these to members, they’ve decided to give the prospects an opportunity to buy in.

Writers don’t have tricks–not like those possessed by salesmen with a captive audience in a resort sales presentation. They share techniques in order to be as persuasive as possible. But they have nothing compared to salesmen with real tricks.

Writers never have a captive audience. Even the guy writing copy for the placard over the urinal knows that anyone using it can simply space out and not read the words in front of him. He can’t force the urinating man to stand there until he reads it. There is no way to obstruct his exit from the restroom in order to make a second offer “that just became available.”

Writers don’t have tricks. They either persuade you first to read and then to make a decision, or else they don’t do one or the other.

Writers leave their prospect free to choose. No tricks. Just persuasion.

Also posted at my business blog.

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