How to Eavesdrop on Prospects and Uncover Their Hot Buttons

First, what are hot buttons and why do you want to uncover them?

Definition: A hot button is the reason that causes people to buy whatever you’re trying to sell them. It’s the itch they want to scratch. The craving they want to fulfill.

In golf, for example, men may say they want to shave 5 strokes off their game, or hit more fairways in regulation. But if you try to sell golf clubs or lessons that appeal to those motives, you likely won’t meet with huge success.

Why?

Because the unspoken hot button for most male golfers is this: They want to slam their tee shots 350 yards straight down the fairway, causing the other three guys in their foursome to doubt their own masculinity, while turning 9 shades of green with envy.

Is this rational? Logical? Who cares. It’s reality.

That’s why you see so many ads for golf clubs that claim to deliver the goods in terms of yards off the tee. The advertisers of “Big Betsy” or “Biggest Bertha” drivers are almost comical in the way they try to outdo each other’s claims for distance. Yet, they sell. Like hotcakes.

Now. Back to your prospect.

Usually, your prospect will never tell you what their hot buttons are. And why should they? When you uncover them, you can push them at will – and your prospects to open their wallets, almost unconsciously.

So hot buttons are important.

Would you like to know three ways to uncover them? Without your prospects’ knowledge or cooperation?

First, promise that you’re selling a service or product that is 100% legal and ethical. Because I can’t let this information fall into the wrong hands.

Promise? Pinky swear? Good.

Here’s how to eavesdrop on prospects and uncover hot buttons: Read their email!

No, no -- not like that.

This is easier than hacking into somebody’s computer and reading their Outlook emails. Also more ethical.

First, look at this opening of a very successful web page sales letter I wrote last year ...

See those bullet points?

Each one addresses a different problem my readers want fixed. These are hot buttons.

Every prospect reading this sales letter has one or more of those problems. When they see their problem in the first three lines of the letter, they nod their head in agreement. They think I am talking to them, because I am talking to them! I have pushed a hot button -- I have reminded them of an itch they want to scratch.

Here’s the key: I learned about each of these hot buttons simply by reading the emails my prospects had sent me during the months before I wrote this sales letter.

Yes, it took a few hours of research to read, organize, collate, and prioritize the problems my prospects wrote about in their emails. But after I did the research by doing the reading, I had a very valuable set of hot buttons, written in the language of my prospects.

You can do this, too.

Today, from this moment on, start saving and organizing every email you get from a prospect or client. Any questions about your service or product, any questions about what problems people have, what you do, how you do it.

Those emails contain nuggets of gold, in the form of hot buttons.

You can use then to improve every sales letter, web page, or print ad you write. But you have to be on the lookout for them -- and make sure you address them squarely in all your written marketing materials.

(More ideas like these in the Free Report, Guaranteed Marketing for Service Business Owners.)