A few years ago, I was brought in by a marketing consultant to do some copywriting for one of his small business clients—a local remodeler. I met with the consultant and client, gathered information, and got ready to start writing.

First, I carefully considered the target market, and their needs and fears. Goodness knows people have lots of fears around hiring a remodeler, including:

What if I give them money, they start my project, then disappear leaving me living in a disaster zone?

What if it takes four times as long as they promised to finish the job?

What if having my house torn apart and a bunch of construction workers around every day turns into a living hell?

What if they don’t understand what I want so I don’t like the end result?

What if the whole thing ends up costing me WAY more than I budgeted and they promised?

The list goes on…

Thankfully, the client had been in business a long time. So they had systems in place to keep these types of problems from happening.

My job was to write marketing materials that would show how the client was different from other remodelers, and most importantly, alleviate these fears as much as possible.

So I worked hard to address each fear and make prospects feel confident it wouldn’t happen if they hired my client.

Once I had a solid first draft, I sent it over to the consultant for review. And you know what he said? “You can’t write about these things…I don’t want you to bring up anything negative!”

His theory was that if we didn’t talk about it, they wouldn’t think about it. Baloney!

The problem was that most people were already worried about these issues long before they read the client’s brochure or Website. So if I didn’t talk about them, their fears became a giant elephant in the room.

I tried to state my case to the consultant, but the client and project was in his hands. So I did the best I could without bringing up any of the objections I knew prospects would have. I just sort of talked around them.

The result? The pieces I wrote weren’t bad, and they did get clients, but all too often prospects would read the brochure or Website and say, “This sounds too good to be true!” (voices dripping with skepticism). Because it did.

Everything I wrote was sunshine and roses without a dark cloud in sight…Even though everyone knew good and well those dark clouds were out there.

I’m quite sure the client lost business as a result.

The moral of the story? Whenever you write marketing materials, or even do a sales pitch live, you must address all of the prospect’s objections. Otherwise you probably won’t make the sale.

Think about it…Would you spend your hard-earned cash on something if you still had a major fear, worry or concern about the purchase? Probably not. And your customers won’t either.

So don’t ignore the elephant standing in the room…Everyone knows it’s there anyway and it smells funny.

Instead, point out objections and fears up front, then show prospect’s why they don’t need to worry about whatever-it-is after all. They’ll feel a million times more confident buying from you if you do.

Have you ever been on the verge of making a purchase, but stopped because of a fear, concern or objection that wasn’t effectively addressed?

Have you come up with any handy ways to address and/or alleviate prospect’s objections and fears in your own business?

If so, please do share by leaving a comment below…

Technorati Tags: Small business marketing, copywriting, sales, objections, costing you sales, marketing