688 – Very powerful social proof: Tom talks Stories and Case Studies

Episode 688 – Stories and Case Studies
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 688 of Screw the Commute Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a copywriting and speaking technique called Stories and Case Studies. Very powerful social proof. Great. Let me tell you about it in a minute. All right. I hope you didn't miss episode 687 and that episode I told you about, a simple program I use to take samples, or I guess you could call them preview segments or teasers of my full content. That's to whet the people's whistle. So they want to consume the full version of the content. And I also put a sample in the show notes on that episode so you can actually see the video that was created from this little audio sample. That was episode 687. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number. That was 687. Oh, and check out my TikTok account. I have one TikTok that's exceeding 263,000 views, and it took me about 5 minutes to create and I had to have about 160 little short training videos on there. So it's tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and you can see all those short things. Please comment like share save all of it that helps helps me out. And also we want to thank everybody contributing to Patreon. All the money from our Patreon goes to support our program for persons with disabilities with scholarships. So thanks so much for that. You can go to screwthecommute.com/patreon for that.

[00:02:08] All right. Let's get to the main event. Stories and case studies. Now they're similar, but they have one specific distinction that I'll cover shortly. See, people love stories, but let me be clear. The stories I'm talking about in this episode are not about you. They're about people you've helped. These stories show that not only can you do or get results that you're claiming in your sales process, but other people, just like your prospects, have gotten success. And this is a form of social proof. Now there's a simple formula for creating a story. And here it is right now. Very simple. Three word formula Problem intervention results. Problem intervention results. So here's an example, and it has to do with my professional speaking training. Now, here's here's the problem. Joe was a pro speaker for three years. He spoke to audiences from about 50 to 150 people. Joe is having no luck selling his book at the back of the room. All right. That's the problem part of this story. All right. The intervention. I watched a video of Joe's presentation and noted that he waited until the very end of his speech to even mention his book. I taught Joe to do a business card drawing in the middle of his presentation and give away a book. This gave him a chance to describe the book with no sales resistance since it was a free prize.

[00:03:50] All right, That was the intervention. Now, this is the results part of the story. Joe sold $900 worth of books on his next presentation. Say problem intervention results. Now, here's one of the mistakes that many people make. They hold back on the intervention part. They think that if they reveal their techniques to other people, will steal their training and they won't get hired. Yeah, someone could steal your idea, but you are the one who knows all the nuances to actually make it work. For instance, with my drawing technique, there are tons of details I've honed over 1000 times to make it work perfectly every time. I didn't mention them in the story because the story would have been an hour long. But I sold the proverbial sizzle, not the steak. You had to hire me to buy or buy my product to get the steak. The story just showed you what could be real for someone like you if you have my product or training. Another thing you should do with stories is to have three different lengths of your story. Let's say you have a five minute powerful story. But you get let's say you get 3 minutes on the Today show. This is your big break. Well, you can't possibly get in a five minute story on a three minute interview, so you'd have to leave it out. Well, I wouldn't have to leave it out because I have a short version for such an occasion. I can tell an entire story in 15 seconds if I have to.

[00:05:32] And I could extend the same story to several minutes if I'm telling it on stage and just about any length of time in between. So have at least three links of all your important stories. Now, where do you put these stories in a sales process? Well, I say process because you could be in a sales pitching situation where you are saying your sales process or you could be putting a sales letter on a web, either one. Now, one of the best places to put a story is right after you claim something in your sales process. So I might say in the sales letter, I can teach you how to sell at the back of the room. And then I'd have the story I just told you about Joe, where I taught him how to do it. All right, Now let's talk about case studies. They have the exact same formula with one major addition. So here's the formula again in case you forgot problem intervention results. Now with case studies, you add extreme detail and I'm going to say extreme detail. I kind of call it a story on steroids. See, case studies are are an optional element in a sales process. I personally would only include them if I was writing a sales letter when I knew the readers were highly analytical. Now I don't have I mean, it could be engineers or something like that or math majors. I don't know. I don't really have many products to sell to politicals, and that's not really my main audience.

[00:07:24] So I don't use case studies personally very often, but it may be right for you. Anyway, I'm going to give you just a small sample of the same story I did about Joe, and I'll emphasize extreme detail. And here we're just going to put a little part of the problem section. Here we go. Joe Smith is a 34 year old professional speaker who has been speaking for money for three years. He speaks to audiences ranging from 50 to 150 people with a mean average of 76.5 people. I laugh because I never do things like this, but it's perfect for analytics. His back of the room sales mean average is $47 with a low of zero and a high of $97.75. All right. See, I like I said, I cracked up because this is just so not me. But you need to know about these because if your audience is analytical and you just give them rough figures, they don't believe you. See exact numbers, ages and sizes and all that stuff. So you see analytics goes orgasm over exact numbers. And they don't trust non exact numbers for, for instance, I could say 21% of male mares. You know, from cities where haz pantyhose. And that wouldn't be believable to an analytical or probably anybody else. But if I said, according to the National Institute of Female Impersonators, 21.25% of male mayors wear Hanes pantyhose. And that's more believable to an analytical. All right. You get my point, right? Extreme detail.

[00:09:23] If you don't use it for analytic goals, they don't trust you. They won't buy. So your job is to decide which one of these formats, story or case study you need. Most people are going to be just stories. Work them up. And keep in mind, you can have as many of these as you need, you know, on different people and different topics and so forth, and then create several different lengths of them in case you're on radio or podcast or TV or on stage. And also, if you are a speaker and your time gets cut, having different lengths of the stories is really important. So if you really want to I mean, I always say that copyrighting, this is a copyrighting technique and is one of at least 31 elements that go into a sales process. That copyrighting is the number one skill in my entire business career, 46 years formally, and even since I was a little kid. So check it out. I have a one of the most cost effective programs ever on this because people charge for five, six, 10,000 and my course is better. So check it out at copywriting901.com. And also, hey, if you want training on all kinds of stuff to make you including professional speaking, including internet and digital marketing, my mentor program is the longest running, most successful, most unique ever in these fields. So check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and we will catch you on the next episode. See you later.