“Treat him like a salesman.
Oblige him to justify his presence. Compare it with other sellers. Measure his costs and results. Don’t accept excuses, that good sellers never come up with. In doing so, you won’t be mistaken. “
Who said that?
These words were written by Claude Hopkins, in his “Scientific Advertising”, written almost 100 years ago, in 1923, and considered a milestone in direct response marketing.
But who was Hopkins referring to? Who we have to treat as a salesman?
In Hopkins’ book, advertising should be treated as a salesman.
Today, we can change the object and look through the same magnifying glass at any element of our marketing.
Let’s take a few examples.
The website.
“Treat it like a salesman.
Force him to justify his presence. Compare it with other sellers. Measure its costs and results. Don’t accept excuses, that the good sellers never come up with. In doing so, you won’t be mistaken. “
Participation in a fair.
“Treat it like a salesman.
Force him to justify his presence. Compare it with other sellers. Measure its costs and results. Don’t accept excuses, that the good sellers never come up with. In doing so, you won’t be mistaken. “
The advertising page in a trade magazine.
“Treat it like a salesman.
Force him to justify his presence. Compare it with other sellers. Measure its costs and results. Don’t accept excuses, that the good sellers never come up with. In doing so, you won’t be mistaken. “
And so on for every tool in your marketing and sales arsenal.
Let’s see, for example, a recent concrete application on ourselves.
To promote our product 1-2-3 Campaign, until a few days ago we alternated between two tools: a video and a classic web page, text only.
What have we done?
Paraphrasing Hopkins:
“We treated them like two salesmen.
We forced them to justify their presence by comparing them. We measured costs and results.”
Same costs. But what was the result?
The classic text-only sales letter sells more than the video. And at that point we didn’t accept any excuses, “that the good sellers never come up with“… so now only the text letter is left to present the product, waiting to be joined by a new salesman.
If you want to see it working, here it is:
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