Masterclass 7 - The Science of Words that Sell, with Elle Connolly

Words are powerful tools that tap into the emotions of an audience. They can evoke emotion, inspire action, and even change minds.

Our guest this time was Elle Connolly founder of 23 Wise Words providing ‘Launch Copy’ expertise and online courses.

This Revenue Coach ® Masterclass was recorded live on Tuesday 24th January at 1200 UK.

Elle is an international writer who specialises in the science of words that sell. Combining her background in psychology with 10+ years in marketing, she teaches salespeople to craft copy that converts.

Masterclass Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:08

Welcome to today's Revenue Coach ® masterclass. I'm Alastair Cole, your host for this session and the CEO and co-founder of Revenue Coach, a sales coaching platform that demystifies the process for founders and accelerates startup growth.

This is the seventh masterclass in our new series, where we explore some of the current challenges in the workplace for sales professionals, and some of the opportunities and one of those is the topic for today: The Science of Words that Sell.

Our guest today, I’m delighted to say, is Elle Connelly, international writer, specialising in using psychology to craft sales copy that sells. Elle is the founder of 23 wise words, a provider of online writing courses and multi channel master classes. Welcome Elle.

Elle Connolly 1:06

Hello, thank you. International writers make me sound very professional. I like that.

Alastair Cole 1:14

Well, I think you know, Harrogate via Sydney, to Revenue Coach ® masterclass counts as international alert. Thanks very much for joining us. It's such a pleasure having you here. And writing a copy that closes sounds like a dream to me. And I'm sure to all the salespeople on the call. Before we get into how that's possible. Could you tell us a little bit about how you got to a place where you're now teaching psychology back to copywriting?

Elle Connolly 1:51

Yeah, so I started in PR, actually, so my degrees in psychology and PR. And I kind of had this really deep interest in psychology. And now it's kind of like, it's great, but am I going to become a psychologist or psychotherapist? Probably not. So I'll park that. And I'll go into PR and marketing. So I spent the majority of my career in different marketing agencies in PR agencies. I always loved writing, and always kind of tried to seek roles where I was writing and then I have a had what I like to call them on life crisis, which I think a lot of women especially can relate to where you kind of go off to have a baby and you don't want to go back to that traditional nine to five corporate life. So I started my business then 23 wise words, back then it was still what I would now classed as content writing, although I would have called myself a copywriter back then. And I think there is a lot of confusion there in the copywriters who are actually writing content and not copy which is more words that sell are actually calling themselves copywriters. So there's a bit of confusion there. But I started content writing, blogs, ebooks, all that kind of content marketing stuff that builds the brand. And then one day I had this kind of epiphany of actually copywriting when I'm trying to make a sale or persuade someone to take an action I want them to take is massively critical. If I'm using psychology, I have to use psychology and I was like, Why is no one talking about this? Why is no one really kind of marrying those two ideas of yes, we talk about? I think we talk about sales psychology when we're talking to people in real life, or maybe over the phone and closing sales that way. But it's not often talked about from the written word point of view, and how to kind of weave in those persuasion principles and the sales psychology into words in order to close in that format as well. And as we know, businesses are now digital, they're online, we're writing all the time, we're closing digitally all the time. And it's so important to have these skills from a sales perspective in your writing, as well as knowing the skills when you're talking to someone face to face or a resume or however else you're closing sales. So that was kind of how I got the journey kind of took me here. And now yeah, I'm just really passionate about just kind of instilling those basic sales psychology skills into writing and helping salespeople and business owners, CEOs, coaches, anything you kind of anyone who has to write for a business or for their business, and just kind of helping them understand what those principles are that can really help them drive sales and get people to convert.

Alastair Cole 4:38

Yeah. What are the 23 wise words?

Elle Connolly 4:45

knew you're gonna ask me that you asked me that. Let's know this story has been reversed engineered actually. So there aren't 23 words. Where's that? I did have a mission statement at one point which I did kind of create 23 words but honestly, I wanted to know why Eyes webs as a URL. It wasn't available on my son's birthday for the 23rd of August. And I was on the Towsley with him. So which is when the business came out? So I was like, right 23 wise words were after that I found out that the number 23 is very kind of weaved into mythology and folklore. There's a lot around that number. I think we spoke about it last time. So now I'm pretty pleased with it. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, there aren't 23 wise words as a backstory. But

Alastair Cole 5:25

yeah, yeah. Well, sir, certainly, it's intriguing to know about the numbers. So great. Great to hear that. And, you know, you could argue that the catch is that the first two characters write off the company name and the URL. And we were talking a little bit before about headlines and first words and for people who are watching and listening to this masterclass, salespeople think about how they might use some science to improve and hit their targets. You know, often that first thing is so important, whether it's a subject of an email or the opening line of what, you know, and we've talked about this and how grappled with it, what tips could you give one anyone on the masterclass about the headline, or that first? First few words?

Elle Connolly 6:15

Yeah, okay. Well, look, first of all, from a purely tactical point of view, just before I kind of talk around headlines and where to start and things, people read in an F pattern, right. So when especially on a webpage, if we're reading a kind of block piece of text will read will skim in an F pattern, which means we pre usually read the first full line, then we'll read the skin, the first few words of the next slide, and then maybe a few less words, or the next slide, just to get a gauge of whether we want to read it or not. So that kind of gives you a bit of a clue as to how important those few, those first few words are on the first few light words of your line. So for example, if you need to split your headline over two lines, if it doesn't fit over one sentence, you need to be really mindful of the word that you're splitting it up at. So the first word of the second line needs to be a word you want someone to remember. And that's going to grab attention. So don't split the sentence in half like and as the first word of the second line, just things like that. Just bear in mind, the F pattern really helps just because it'll mean you're kind of front loading your best words onto those top P lines. And it helps people that skimming people are skimming, they read those, it's words they want to see, it's where they're interested in, they'll stop and read the rest. So just as a kind of side note, just remembering that F pattern can really help. From a psychological point of view. As humans, we are more motivated to avoid pain than to gain a benefit. So if we start with pain points, and you'll see this everywhere, like we start with problems, you'll read a blog, it starts with the problem, you read a webpage, it starts with the pain point, though the frustration that the reader is facing. And from a psychological point of view, there is a reason behind that. And the reason is, we're more likely to be hooked in and read because we want to avoid pain. More often than not if you start with the outcome. And I'm not saying that the headline quite often I suggest headlines can be outcomes. And I'll come back to that. But set but when you're talking body copy those first lines, that first paragraph should really be the problem in order to hook people in. And there's different ways of doing that. And there's different, obviously, with different platforms and different reasons for your writing. But as a general rule, if you don't know where to start, and if you're just kind of drawing a blank with your blank screen in front of you, starting with the problem is 90% of the time going to be your best option, because people are just more likely to read it. So yeah, I would definitely say and this kind of copywriting techniques like start with a problem aggravate the problem, give them the solution, and then give them the outcome, which is kind of as a general rule can be your opening paragraph to a blog to a web page to an email. It's just a nice little formula that we call the peso formula. So problem, aggravation, solution and outcome. Just a nice little way of remembering how to start things.

Alastair Cole 9:16

Okay, that's great. We're gonna come back to that we're focusing on this first paragraph where I was talking about showing the pain first and then I love thinking about that first word on the second line if you have to break it. Yeah, how? How far do we turn should the selfie be turned the dial in terms of the pain? How scary should they be? ‘Cause obviously you could go crazy. Yeah, but it repulses people. So where do you start with the dial? Yeah, look,

Elle Connolly 9:41

It depends on what you're writing. Okay. So it depends on your industry as well. So, I do get this quite a lot where people can like it, I don't my audience doesn't necessarily feel a pain. So they might be feeling more of a frustration and it is going to depend on your industry. What I would say is, and you don't want to scare mongers, right? You don't really want to release people. It's like all doom and gloom the whole time. But what I will say is that it really is powerful psychologically, to really kind of get, make sure your reader understands that you understand them empathetically. So it's kind of in kind of real life interactions, there's a psychological, psychological kind of principle called mirroring, which you're probably familiar with. So the idea is that if you want to build empathy, and connection with someone, subconsciously, you mirror their behaviour, so you mirror their facial expressions, your mirror, sometimes how they speak, your mirror their body language. And that's what we do kind of automatically without thinking. When we're reading something that someone's written, we obviously can't mirror their facial expressions, we can't read their body language, so we have to mirror what's going on in their head. And there's always a turning point where people kind of go from that point of this is a pain I have, but I can live with it, too. This is a pain or a challenge or a frustration I have and I want to do something about it. And that's the point they're going to convert, that's the point, they're going to come to you to make the sale, right. So if you can put as many pain points and mirror what is in their head on your page, at the point, when they're ready to take that action at the point when they've almost hit that turning point, then that is what's going to convert them in because they can see that you understand that you're building empathy, you're building connection, just like you would in real life with mirroring their body language, you're actually mirroring what's going on in their head. So in answer to that question around, how much do you dial it up? I don't think you can dial it up too much. Especially on a sales page. So say if somebody is on at the point of converting, so you're wanting to try and convert them into a programme you've got or, or a package you've got or a product that you're selling. So they're at the point where they're about to buy or part with their money. At this point, it's really important to show as many kinds of pain points and delve into what they're feeling in their head as much as possible. And more often than not, they're feeling pain. They're feeling frustration, they're feeling challenges, rather than, you know, feeling. They're not thinking about the ultimate outcome so much as I want this frustration or this challenge to be out. And I need a solution to it. So seeing those on the page is going to be really powerful.

Alastair Cole 12:30

Okay, so definitely enough pain that it's no longer livable, it's not something I can, I can deliver them on a daily basis, I want to make a change and disguise, and the sky's the limit. And so I guess that could be you know, missing, concerned about hitting a target, missing targets not closing enough deals, deal size too small. So anything like that. For salespeople,

Elle Connolly 12:58

yeah, and just being really, really specific. So what I try to do when I'm trying to really understand what's going on in someone's head, and there are techniques to do this from a research point of view. But a really kind of easy exercise you can do is to literally imagine what that person is doing right now at the point where they need to take action to solve this problem. So, for example, for me, I teach people how to write their website copy. So if I'm trying to imagine really specifically the scenario they're in when they might want to use me, I imagine them, they've grabbed a cup of coffee, they've blocked out their calendar, they've sat down at their computer, they've opened their laptop, they're kind of doing this, they're really kind of preparing themselves fingers over the keyboard mind blank, and they're like, I can't do this on my own. And it's four hours later all the time that they are blocked out. They've written a page I really imagine themselves in that sense, then in that scenario, and then I write that down on my page. I don't just say oh, and you find it difficult to write your website because you don't have inspiration I really paint that picture so it can be a really powerful exercise for a salesperson to do is actually kind of what are they doing at that point where the frustration is just got too much but

Alastair Cole 14:17

I think that's a really a really big takeaway for anybody listening about you do really well on your website you it's a very human thing so it's easy to say well you know, you'd buy our our system from us because it speeds things up but actually closing your eyes and put yourselves in the in the in the seat of the buyer. How do they feel emotionally as a human so that I think that's really great. So let's keep going with your kind of pain. What was next

Elle Connolly 14:51

Hey, so pain, aggravation, aggravation, yeah.

Alastair Cole 14:55

So if that first bit is about the pain then what would be your tips for In aggravation for, for how a salesperson might then you know, articulate or expand on. Yeah, that pain.

Elle Connolly 15:08

Yeah example. So the easiest example I would and it's and one thing as well to just know is this is not a long this pay so technique is not a kind of long body of copy, it's just a paragraph long just to kind of hook the person in. The easiest example is probably the weight loss industry. So the weight loss industry does pay so really, really well. And we can all relate to it. And we've all seen these adverts, so they might start with can't fit into your favourite swimsuit anymore. So that's your problem, right? This is the problem where they're kind of like, Alright, I need to do something about this, I can't fit into my favourite swimsuit, their aggravation would be and you're so a holiday to Morocco is just around the corner or something kind of Morocco doesn't have a beach, let's say Tenerife. Your summer holiday to Tenerife is just around the corner. So that's the aggravation, right? It's just another layer on the problem that just helps them kind of really internalise it and envisage themselves in that place. And then you move around to the solution, why not join our four week belly fat loss programme outcome and walk onto the beach full of confidence in your, you know, in your favourite bathing suit, so you'd probably word it better than I just had. But you can kind of see how it's not a long paragraph. It's not war and peace. But it just takes someone from the place they are layering on that level of anxiety or aggravation, and then round to your solution and what life could be like after in a really nice, quick, succinct way.

Alastair Cole 16:47

I'm guessing that Steve's Sydney influence is coming through. Yeah. So

Elle Connolly 16:54

even England, is it,

Alastair Cole 16:57

though? I mean, that look, that's great, that pace. So the framework, I think, is really helpful. And that works brilliantly on the page. And so thanks for that. What about, you know, a lot of communication is, is, you know, digital now, and email and social media and attention spans are shorter, and it's even more challenging to grab people's attention. So what what, in terms of getting people to open emails or converting people or getting that meeting? You know, it's even shorter, right? You don't really have time in a subject line or headline to do the full pace. So what tips would you give anybody here about how they might rethink those first sentences on that subject?

Elle Connolly 17:49

Yeah, email is. Email is actually one of my favourite formats of writing, because it gives you so much scope for storytelling, which, of course, is a buzzword of the industry, but it is crucial in building connections and kind of getting people to where you kind of need them to be. So let's talk about subject lines of emails, which I think is like, there's so much advice out there as to what to do your main, the only job of a subject line is to get your email opened, just like the only job of a headline is to get someone to read the next sentence, the only job of any piece of copy is to get move someone along along along to the point of the click to the point of the conversion. So when we think of a subject line like that, the first thing you need to do is it needs to be noticed. Okay, it's not gonna get clicked or opened without being noticed. So it's just a kind of disruption technique. So as we know, using emojis in subject lines helps, we know using someone's first name in the subject line really helps. We know that disrupting the Inbox by maybe being one word, or a really long subject line. So just kind of doing things differently in terms of like, you might usually see a subject line that's maybe five or six slides long. So why not just do one that's one word long, or why not do one that's 10 words long. So it's just disruption, disrupting that sea of sameness in the inbox. So in terms of actual techniques for subject lines, other than kind of first name emoji, that kind of thing. Words like this, there's a technique we call double curiosity stacking. So the idea is that instead of saying, oh, read to find out the 10 best recipes of the year or something. So that's curiosity, right? That's asking us if someone's gonna need to click in order to get it. We want to add another layer of curiosity to that. So it might be something like this is the best recipe you're gonna read this year. So it's almost like not just one layer or Yeah, I want to open up and see the recipe I want to open up and see what is that particular recipe that they're going to that they're going to tell me that's even better than the list you know? So it's called Double curiosity stacking in it in a subject line. It really works very, very well for email just trying to get people to click that button.

Alastair Cole 20:18

And so is that the one all see these articles saying? Seven tips to lose? Yeah, the belly is that that is talking about their double Kira, so it's not just that I can lose it. But there's something else.

Elle Connolly 20:35

So seven tips to lose my bit might be a bit hell of the moment we've got, we've got on a weight theme now is January, so it's topical. That would be one layer of curiosity so that you're asking someone to click and say, so they can find out what the seven tips are? Layering another double layer of curiosity would be for example, saying this? See, it's kind of using the word like this or that so I would put this in like Asterixis, is the beer belly buster. Yeah. And then I might say brackets and 10 other tips or something like that. So you've kind of really there's one, there's one level of curiosity there. And then there's another level because you've kind of added on this. Okay, this one I really need to read.

Alastair Cole 21:25

Okay, that makes sense. And so, that's pretty helpful in terms of those the subject lines in that first headline, try and make it as disruptive as possible. And it should, should that extend to being provocative? How kind of you know, cheaply, should people who are in the master class? How cheeky would you advise them to be?

Elle Connolly 21:55

It kind of comes down to a brand voice perspective, I think it's important just to remain consistent as well. So you don't want to be. I think the other reason I like email a lot is you can push the boundaries a little bit more potentially. And they're a little bit more kind of conversational and informal. And maybe you can have a little bit more fun with the puns and things. But you don't, you still need to remain authentic to the brand voice into what people are going to see when speak with they speak to you are you going to sound the same, if they go on your website is that going to be a kind of similar tone, it doesn't need to be exactly the same. But it can be really obvious when someone is trying too hard to be something they're not right all the time when I do voice of customer strategy work. So quite often, there's the kind of CEO who wants to shake things up and be a bit more disruptive. And then there's maybe someone else who wants to be a bit more the marketer was conservative , say, and they come up, we come up with this really great brand of boys. And then the end result is that it just goes through the lines of approval and just gets washed down and washed down and washed down. So it does really need to be authentic to what you feel comfortable saying and talking about. Having said that, if you feel comfortable being a bit more provocative, I would say, what you want to do is get someone to open, write or read on. So if you can do that through using provocative kind of language and more interesting conversational language than we're used to, then if it gets the click, that's the ultimate goal, right? Without compromising your integrity of

Alastair Cole 23:43

Okay, so some people were listening, we were watching. That sounds great little tips and the paragraphs, and the peso of veganism is a brilliant framework. If somebody is going to come on board with those, and they're thinking, Yeah, I reckon I could make a change and maybe improve my writing, my better copy that's going to close. Yeah. What would be your recommendation about the next step they might be able to perform later today? What would be a recommendation about how to start building that muscle? Where could they go to use what would you recommend as a net? Yeah.

Elle Connolly 24:20

Okay, so I've got a lot of tips for websites. But I think in terms of what someone listening or watching right now can do today is not necessarily going to be about changing websites and things, I'm not going to kind of go down that route. Although I do want to give a little tip, which I think could be really useful for people. If you do want to make a slight change to your website. These are two things I would suggest doing. So first of all, is to put a binary choice call to actions at the bottom of your homepage. So that means instead of asking somebody just to take the action you want them to take whether that's book a demo, whether it's book a call Whatever that is, give them that option, of course, but also give them a secondary option say to, it could be to download something, you've got a freebie, or it could just be to navigate them to a different part of the site. Because as humans, we like to make decisions in binary choice. So we like to either decide this one or this one, if we get more than two decisions to make, we get a bit confused. So if you only give somebody one option at the bottom of your homepage, then just do this. Their other option is to do nothing, right? So their binary choice is either click this button or don't click this button. And then 50% of the time, you might have lost them. Whereas if you give the binary choice to either do this or do this, the option to do nothing is a third choice. And you know, the shipper brand gets all scrambled, and we're like, No, I can't. So you're more likely to get someone to take them to take an action you want them to take. So if you do nothing else, I would just suggest, but only if your homepage makes the call to action binary choice, it'll just help keep people either on your website or making a choice you want them to take rather than doing nothing. And another little tip, I would put lots of my tips around the buttons, because that is the point of conversion. And they're so crucial. I would say look at all your buttons. So wherever you've got it, maybe it's in an email, maybe it's on a sales page, maybe it's on social media, wherever you've got some way where you're asking someone to take an action, put a click trigger near it. And a click trigger is something that is just going to tip someone over the edge to actually want to click. So it's things like testimonials, it's a really short, no more than two lines, testimonial. It's a statistic. So how many people you have helped do this, it's something that really does just kind of you've you've said all you want to say they're about to click the button. And it's just that extra bit of credibility or that extra bit of trust building that's just going to help them click, and it's what we call a click trigger. And you can put those near all your buttons. And it's a nice little kind of optimization tip that you can probably implement on pretty much anything you write.

Alastair Cole 27:08

And these principles of binary choice. I love that it does that work. And the and the time these triggers the mini the military is that does that also work if I was writing an email trying to trying to get somebody to take a meeting separately at work and ask them

Elle Connolly 27:24

and the binary choice doesn't work as well with email only because in that kind of format, and same on landing pages as well, we want to stick to the rule of one. So you're writing for one audience, one message, one call to action, particularly on landing pages, don't give people too many options to not do what you want them to do. The binary choice thing works really well when you're asking someone to make a bigger commitment that they might not be ready to make. So you give them something else. That's a smaller commitment. So that's why it works particularly well for web pages. I wouldn't, you could potentially use it in email in that you might kind of ask someone to book a call and then put in the PS. In the meantime, why don't you check out this blog we wrote so do you just kind of keep them in your world a little bit. But is the binary choice thing mainly for your website and your home pages?

Alastair Cole 28:22

Well, thank you, I mean, I did little, super detailed tips, you've given her a fantastic you know that binary choice, which word you choose, if you're breaking your first your first paragraph or your headline across two lines, all that was gold dust and you know, that recommendation of using disruptive language in it in an email subject line and trying to the curiosity with double purists trying to make that as curious as disruptive and, and sparking curiosity is key. The biggest thing for me was the peso you know, laying out your communication in terms of the pain, aggravation, the solution and then the outcome they gave. So, it's really fantastic. It has been, you know, thank you so much for those insights. And for your time, if, if anybody wanted to reach out to you with any further questions, where would they? Where could they go? Well,

Elle Connolly 29:16

yeah, the best place is probably Instagram at 23 wise words, I'm always on there sharing tips and tricks and then in the link in my bio, you can kind of see different ways to my well, so I've got a science behind copy that converts kind of a free email mini class, which is that kind of delve a bit more into the persuasion principles and things so I would say that or I'm on YouTube as well at 23 wise words on YouTube, sharing videos and tips and tricks and copywriting hacks and all sorts so those are probably the best places.

Alastair Cole 29:50

Fantastic. And if anybody wants to know more about a Revenue Coach ® and how we demystify the sales process for founders and accelerate startup growth, they can head over to revenue code Mr. AI and wood finishing bang on time. It's been really insightful and an absolute pleasure. l thank you so much for your time and your expertise.

Elle Connolly 30:12

Thank you fellas, it's been fun. Thank you.

Alastair Cole 30:15

Yeah, good. Okay, well, we'll leave it there. Okay, waiting to watch this thing. That's it. We're out bye.

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