♦️ How starving prospects build thriving firms (and 3 signals to find yours)
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Copywriting legend Gary Halbert goes to prison for tax fraud. The conditions are harsh. He doesn’t know if he’ll survive in Boron Prison for long. So he writes letters to his son to teach him everything he knows about copywriting and marketing. And later his letters became the famous book: The Boron Letters.
“If you and I both owned a hamburger stand and we were in a contest to see who would sell the most hamburgers, what advantages would you most like to have on your side?” The answers from students vary: Some say they’d like to have the advantage of having superior meat. Others say location. And some others prefer being able to offer the lowest prices. Then he explains the only advantage he’ll take to sell more burgers than all the students: “A starving crowd.” What type of burger you sell, how you sell it, or even the price doesn’t matter when you have a starving crowd. Everything becomes easy. After the burger stand example, Halbert tells his son to be “a student of markets” and look for starving crowds. Because when there is no starving crowd, everything is hard. Even the perfect solution doesn’t sell. Even good marketing tactics don’t work. Then the question is: How can you know if you are serving “starving prospects”? And how can you sell what those prospects are looking for? To answer these questions, let’s look at three things that make them starve: 1. Starving prospects have an urgent painStarving prospects have unignorable symptoms. They are aware of their hunger. Every moment is painful. And they know this is not like any other problem. Because this problem has high stakes. It affects their careers. So they put aside other problems and focus their resources on fixing it. They know that if they overcome their hunger first, they can eventually solve other problems. What it means for your firm:
2. Starving prospects can’t fix their hunger themselvesStarving prospects always try to fix the problem themselves first. They come up with internal solutions. They test things. But eventually they realize they can’t do it themselves. Sometimes because they don’t know how. Sometimes because it takes too much time. But the point is: Starving prospects wouldn’t be starving if they could feed themselves. What it means for your firm:
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