He does note that he prefers to avoid putting more pain into the marketplace as his contribution to humanity. Even so, he gives us a couple of fairly well known sales models:

AIDA: Attention, interest, desire and action.

Problem, promise, proof and price.

So how do you do that without focusing on the problem? Joe reprints an article on the subject that you can find here:

The Greatest Motivator Isn’t What You Think—
or, What I Learned From Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler on Valentine’s Day

Then Joe says he’s stepped back from that position a little. Now he thinks it’s okay to at least mention the problem in case the person is in denial about it. Alternately you could be entering the conversation going on inside their head that way.

One example he gives is that someone who has sore feet would probably pay attention to a headline “Sore Feet?” But then he says he’d want to test that against solution oriented headlines like “Want Foot Relief?”

Joe quotes Eugene Schwartz as having said, “You are literally the script writer for your prospect’s dreams.”

Based on that, Joe sets out to make up a new formula: Promise, proof and price.

Interestingly enough, that formula is only missing one of the elements copywriters often teach: Picture. So the 4 P’s as they’re called are picture, promise, proof and push (or price).

I think Joe is headed in the right direction here. It coincides with what we’re learning about generative NLP (aka NOTNLP). In NOTNLP, there’s no concern for any problems. You simply find out what the person wants and help them create that in a future context.

The difference between that and “Picture” is that you take them there to that future and help them experience what it would be like if they already had it and knew they did. That’s a little more thorough than simply imagining something.

On to Chapter 17…

Here Joe talks about expanding his 3 step formula into a full online landing page. He uses an example which is no longer live. I can’t tell for sure whether it’s a domain parking page or an affiliate site. In any event, he’s just showing us an example of promise, proof and price.