Chapter 4
Writing for results

Why being very, very clear about what you’re trying to achieve is a good idea, and what can go wrong if you aren’t; the difference between the result you want and the response that will make it more likely; why readers need to be rewarded; and the importance for persuasive writers of remembering that it’s a competitive world out there.

A couple of years ago, I became involved in a dispute with a builder. As you do. I felt that – having over-run the original schedule by about nine months and over-spent the agreed budget by roughly 40% – he was being a little unreasonable in sending me yet another enormous invoice. He felt that I was a slippery, cheating, ungrateful bastard.

We both did a bit of shouting on the phone, and then we started writing letters. At first, I tried – honestly – to be non-confrontational; to explain, clearly and coolly, why I was fully entitled to withhold payment, and to make him see the error of his ways.

It didn’t work. My opponent persisted in his stubborn belief that I should sell my children into slavery in order to pay his final, outrageous invoice. And, rather to my surprise, he wrote quite good, very long letters in support of his case – somewhat in the style of a self-important provincial solicitor (‘I am therefore obliged to restate the position as it pertains to the monies withheld …).

Our correspondence continued for a while, punctuated by a few more angry phone calls. And then two things occurred to me.

First, I realised that, while I was upset and anxious about the dispute, my opponent was enjoying it. Writing long, pompous letters in self-justifying legal-speak was clearly a welcome distraction from the tedious and time-consuming business of actually building things for people.

Second, and much worse, I realised that I’d completely lost sight of my objective. By this time, I had probably written half a dozen letters. I had also lost quite a bit of sleep. But, actually, from the outset, there had only ever been two options: I could pay him the ludicrous sum he was demanding, or see him in court.

Everything else was wasted words.

For a persuasive writer, it’s the most basic mistake in the book: sitting down to write without a really clear picture of the intended result. But if this gnarled professional can make such a schoolboy error, so can just about anyone. And believe me, it happens all the time. Vast swathes of supposedly persuasive writing fail to persuade anybody of anything because the writer has neglected to answer (or perhaps even ask) the question:

What, specifically, am I trying to achieve here?

Actually, I think this fundamental foul-up can be seen to take at least four slightly different forms:

• Not knowing what the intended result is, in the first place

• Losing sight of the intended result, somewhere along the way

• Not being single-minded enough about the intended result

• Not being realistic about the intended result

Let’s look, briefly, at each of these …

Not knowing what the intended result is, in the first place

This is most likely to happen when a persuasive writer doesn’t realise that he is a persuasive writer. That’s to say, it’s a simple failure to recognise that a piece of writing has the potential to influence its reader.

How can this come about? It can be an innocent mistake; a misguided belief that the purpose of a particular piece of writing is solely ‘informative’. I remember on more than one occasion being asked by clients to write ads that would ‘just announce’ the opening of a new store, say, or even the launch of a new product. Not possible. Advertising is, by definition, persuasive communication; it’s always selling something – even when its immediate purpose isn’t to talk the customer into making a purchase. An ad that doesn’t persuade is like a fish that doesn’t swim: dead in the water.

But, more often, when writing shows no sign of having any clearly defined objective, it’s because the writer is so wrapped up in his own agenda – what his interests are, how he sees the world, how committed he is to this or dedicated to that – that he simply isn’t relating to his reader at all. And if you’re writing without a powerful sense of an ever-present reader, why would you concern yourself with the result you are trying to achieve? The only result that you’re interested in is a world that’s a little more up to date with what’s going on in your life.

Losing sight of the intended result

My building dispute illustrates this pretty well. I’m fairly sure I knew what my goal was when the correspondence started, but by the third or fourth letter I was writing for no other reason than to vent some of the pent-up rage I was feeling – oh yes, and to tear to shreds the manifestly false logic of the argument put forward by my adversary in paragraph three of his most recent communication …

Of course, it’s easy to forget what you’re fighting for in the heat of battle. But it isn’t only when the red mist descends that writers make this mistake. In professional persuasive writing, it often happens when the client has something he is particularly proud of – a new manufacturing process, an award for innovation in the plastics industry, a new bottling plant just outside Kettering, or whatever. True, these things may be relevant to the reader, in which case including them could well help to bring about the desired result. But often, the writer dutifully gives them a mention because – well, because the client’s expecting to see them, and he’s paying, after all. Never mind that every irrelevant word makes the desired result less likely.

When we write on our own account, there’s no actual flesh and blood client to blame. But perhaps we all have an ‘inner client’; a little voice inside our heads, prompting us to say more than we need to achieve the result we want; to tell our reader what we want them to know rather than what they might be interested to hear.

Not being single-minded enough about the intended result

In the previous chapter, I talked about the need to be ruthless in defining your target audience; the importance of zeroing in on the individual (or type of individual) reader you most want to persuade. Exactly the same applies to results. The more focused you can be about what your objective is, the greater your chance of success.

In fact, it’s fair to say that the best persuasive communication is always single-minded. It sets itself one specific, clearly defined goal – and it doesn’t let anything get in the way of achieving this.

Don’t misunderstand me; it’s perfectly possible for a good piece of persuasive writing to achieve more than one objective. But the important thing is that the writer must always be clear about the main aim, and treat everything else as a lower priority.

Not being realistic about the intended result

A couple of years ago, I was asked to work on a new advertising campaign for a client in the water cooler business. (Warning: some product categories have been changed to protect the feelings of incredibly stupid clients.) The objective of the advertising was ambitious: the client wanted nothing less than to ‘change the way that people think about water coolers’.

Advertising can, actually, achieve such aims. Sometimes. When it’s brilliantly conceived, meticulously executed and perfectly timed to connect with a receptiveness to change out there in the world at large … oh yes, and when the client is prepared to spend a lot of money. This one wasn’t. He wanted us to change the way the British public perceived not just his product but the entire category of product to which it belonged, in one small black and white advertisement, measuring roughly 10 centimetres by 15.

It’s an extreme example, but the same thing happens all the time: clients and agencies setting themselves absurd, unfeasible goals. In a way, it’s understandable. Clients quite naturally want the money they spend on advertising to produce dramatic results; they want sales to quadruple overnight, and to keep on doing so night after night, until each of their competitors in turn is forced into bankruptcy, and total market domination is theirs. Agencies, almost as understandably – though less forgivably – are reluctant to admit that the ads they produce may fall short of delivering such a desirable outcome. So the two sides conspire to produce advertising which aims ludicrously high, and falls catastrophically (and inevitably) short.

Be realistic when you decide what result you want your writing to achieve. Ask yourself, given what I know about my reader, and the strength of the arguments available to me, and my skill as a writer, how likely is it that I can accomplish this objective? Better still, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Now, what are the chances that you could be persuaded?

Hmm. In that case, you need to rethink the result you’re after.

If you don’t want to know the results, look away now

Let’s look at a few examples of some things that you might want to write, and the kind of results you might reasonably set out to achieve:

• Job application. Intended result: secure an interview. (NB Not secure the job – a small, but significant distinction.)

• Email advising a client of potential risks inherent in a proposed course of action. Intended result: cover your arse.

• Flyer for school summer fair. Intended result: 10% more attendees than last year.

• Letter to former boss asking for a reference. Intended result: glowing reference from former boss.

• Poster asking for information on missing cat. Intended result: information leading to return of missing cat.

• Angry letter to bank having just been refused new, much increased overdraft facility. Intended result: to have your say, get it off your chest, let off steam. (NB This is a perfectly reasonable objective, provided you are clear that this is what you want to achieve.)

If these examples seem trite to you, I’m unabashed. Because it really doesn’t matter in the slightest what the result you decide to aim for may be; only that you’re very clear about what is; that you never lose sight of it; that you don’t allow secondary objectives to cloud the issue; and that it’s realistically achievable.

Another reason why knowing the result you want is a good idea

In a moment, I’m going to say quite a bit more about how knowing the result you want affects what you write. But first, let’s pause to acknowledge another seemingly obvious but often ignored reason why a clearly defined objective is of value:

Because if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve in a piece of writing, it’s impossible to judge how far you have succeeded.

Did you get an interview for that job? How many tickets were sold for the summer fair? Was there any milk on the doorstep next morning? The more specific and measurable the result, the easier it is to evaluate your performance as a persuasive writer.

The fourth ‘R’ of good persuasive writing?

I wonder if, over the last few pages, you may have noticed an apparent flaw in my argument? If so, I think I know what it might be. I suspect the insistent little voice inside your head that I was talking about earlier may well have been muttering something like, ‘OK, I can see why not being clear about the result you want from a piece of writing is a bad idea. But I don’t really see why the reverse is true; how knowing what result you want actually helps you achieve it. Wanting something isn’t the same as getting it. It’s a bit like saying just because I know that I want Crystal Palace to beat Arsenal on Saturday, that means they will.’

If that thought, or anything like it, has crossed your mind, I admit you have a point. Because there is, if not a flaw, then at least a gap in the argument I’ve presented so far; something else that good persuasive writers have to do between deciding on the result they want and achieving it.

Response: the moment when the result you want becomes a possibility

The result of a piece of persuasive writing is what happens next; how the reader thinks, feels or behaves after she has finished reading (whether immediately afterwards, a short while later, or after an interval of many years). The response, on the other hand, is what goes on inside the reader’s head while she is actually reading.

This is a crucial distinction. Why? Because, as we’ve acknowledged, the result is clearly something that no writer, however persuasive, can have any control over. Once the reader has finished reading, it’s out of the writer’s hands: whether the reader goes out and buys Brand X, votes for the Monster Raving Loony Party, or makes a donation to the Sunny Meadows Home for Retired Police Horses is entirely up to her.

But while the reader is actually reading, it’s a different matter: a good writer can hope to evoke a specific response – which may make the intended result more likely.

Like so much else in this book, the basic principle of what I’m saying here is incredibly simple. Person reads advert. Thinks: ‘Hmm, this Brand X sounds worth a try.’ (Response.) Goes to shop, buys large quantity of Brand X. (Result.)

But, in practice, it’s quite a lot more complicated than that for two main reasons.

What response is most likely to lead to the intended result?

Sadly, most people are rather more complex psychologically than my enthusiastic Brand X convert above. And very rarely as persuasive writers can we hope to identify a response that will lead directly and infallibly to the result we want.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s look briefly at another of the examples I mentioned above.

It’s local election time. You’re a passionate supporter of the Monster Raving Loony Party, living in a ward held by Labour with a majority of 5,000. You’re writing a flyer. You know the result you want: one more vote than Labour. But what is the response which is most likely to enable you to achieve your aim? What is the specific feeling or thought process which, if you can succeed in triggering it, will get local voters off their backsides and down to the polling station, ready to put their mark next to your candidate’s name?

Tricky. It might be: ‘These Monster Raving Loonies sound fantastic – I agree with everything they say, I’ll definitely vote for them.’

Or: ‘As far as I’m concerned, education is the big issue locally – and it sounds as if the MRL party are closest to my views. I think I’ll vote for them.’

Or: ‘God, I’d like to poke Tony Blair (or Harriet Harman, or Jade from Big Brother, or whoever is Labour leader by the time you read this) in the eye with a sharp stick. But, failing that, a vote for the MRL party would teach him a lesson – even if it’s only a local election.’

Of course, there isn’t a single correct answer to this hypothetical problem. When we write persuasively, there may be several – or even many – possible responses which may help us achieve the result we want. And it’s up to us to decide which is the best bet.

So what do you write to trigger the desired response?

And so, at last, we come to the place where any piece of persuasive writing succeeds or fails. Not the printed page or the PC screen, but the inside of the reader’s head. Because, as a persuasive writer, what you write really doesn’t matter at all; only how your reader responds.

To demonstrate what I mean by that, I thought we might turn our attention to the personal columns. You know the kind of thing:

Guy, 37, Mayfair apartment, GSOH, wltm …

Presumably, our friend in search of love here is indeed a ‘guy’. (Why would he lie about that?) He might perhaps be knocking a year or two off his real age; and, as for the flat, it sounds frankly a bit implausible. But, since such things can be proved one way or another, and only a cretin would risk being caught out in a bare-faced lie, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. What are we supposed to make, though, of that old lonely hearts column stand-by, ‘GSOH’?

Yes, of course, it stands for good sense of humour. But what does Would-be Lover Boy intend to communicate by that? A few possibilities might include:

• ‘I was recently appointed Life President of the Jim Davidson Fan Club.’

• ‘I’m very proud of my collection of amusing bow ties.’

• ‘I can quote whole episodes of Monty Python off–by-heart. Shall I?’

• ‘I set fire to my best mate’s beard last night. Laugh? I nearly wet myself.’

The fact that one person has a good sense of humour can no more be communicated to another by means of a four letter abbreviation than a C major chord can be carved in stone or the smell of a freshly bathed baby captured in computer code. All our Lonely Heart has succeeded in communicating is that he thinks he has a good sense of humour; not the same thing at all.

The problem, of course, lies with that unco-operative individual I talked about in the last chapter, the Reader Who Always Reads Between The Lines. When the RWARBTL reads that her prospective lover possesses a ‘GSOH’, her response isn’t ‘Ooh, lovely, a man who can make me laugh’; it’s ‘I’ll be the judge of that, buster.’

So how might a Lonely Hearts advertiser successfully communicate a good sense of humour? There’s only one way: by writing something that demonstrates it. Like this, for example, which recently appeared in the London Review of Books:

People who use museum postcards instead of letter-paper; people who own garden composters; mechanics called Andy who get stroppy over the phone if you call during their lunch hour, fully expecting you to know that they take lunch between ten and 11 in the morning; people who shoehorn obscure French novelists into any conversation; people who take over-sized stroller pushchairs on the Northern Line at rush-hour and get shirty when other passengers refuse to dislocate their limbs and fold themselves up in the corner to make room; newspaper supplement journalists who begin every article like they’re writing a novel in the hope that a literary agent will snap them up; literary agents who snap up newspaper supplement journalists believing that their opening paragraphs would make an excellent start to a novel; the girl at Superdrug who never tells me how much my items come to but expects me to succumb to the power of her mind and make me look at the little screen on her till instead; postmen who make a concerted effort to bend packages with ‘do not bend’ clearly stamped across the front; Bob Wilson; thirtysomethings who listen to Radio-head, believing that Thom Yorke’s depressing introspection has revolutionised the British music scene and made rock energetic once again without realising that Dire Straits fans were saying exactly the same thing about them in the early Eighties; people who buy organic mushrooms; people who subscribe to magazines and get excited every time a new one lands on the doormat; people who have doormats; people who applaud the linesman’s offside flag; people with more than one cat; people who have bought radiator covers; people who frame museum postcards sent by people who use them instead of letter-paper; people who own a copy of Michael Palin’s ‘Pole to Pole’ on DVD. Everybody else write to man, 37. Box No 257.

Well, it makes me laugh. But, of course, this is a high risk strategy, because humour is notoriously subjective. That’s what good persuasive writers do, though: they write what they believe will elicit the desired response (in this case, a laugh or at least a smile) from the reader, thus increasing the chances of achieving the result they want (in this case, a reply to Box 257).

This is such an important point that I’m going to risk saying it again in an only very slightly different way:

Good persuasive writers don’t tell their readers what to think or feel; they say something that makes their readers feel or think it for themselves.

And when we write persuasively, every word we use has the potential to trigger a response – positive or negative – in our reader. Yes, all of them. Even the most apparently neutral word or phrase often comes with baggage. Consider, for example, the fact that our man with the alleged GSOH chose to describe himself as a ‘guy’. Are you the kind of gal who wltm a guy? Or would you, perhaps, prefer a chap, a bloke, a fella, a dude, a geezer or even a man?

And it’s even worse than that, because it’s not just all the words we use that can make the response – and therefore the result – we want more, or less likely. So can the words we don’t use.

Reward: quite possibly the fifth R of good persuasive writing

Do you remember that in the previous chapter, I talked about the way in which readers continually calculate whether what they stand to gain from a piece of writing will compensate for the time it will cost them to read it? Good, because I want to develop this idea of rewarding the reader a little further.

Probably the most obvious sense in which a reader gets a return on her investment of time is if she takes something of value away from a piece of writing – information that will help her in her work; an inspiring idea; a foolproof recipe for hollandaise sauce, or whatever. But there’s also a much more immediate way that good persuasive writing can reward the reader. Here’s an example of how not to do it.

Perhaps you recall (though, on balance, you probably don’t) a recent advertisement for a well-known fast food chain that showed an expensive looking photograph of a box of eggs, conspicuously marked ‘free range’, and over this a headline reading:

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? We think it’s the chicken.

Putting aside the issue of whether a famously litigious retailer of sugar-laden, fat-drenched, heart attack-inducing, tastebud-bypassing pap should really be wasting millions of its shareholders’ money attempting to convince us of its concern for animal welfare, this ad fails disastrously as a piece of persuasive communication. Why? Because it leaves the reader nothing whatsoever to do. It asks a familiar question; and then, goofily, it answers it.

The photograph tells us the eggs are free range. We all know the old conundrum about ‘which came first … ’ So all the headline needed to say was something like:

For us, the chicken always comes first.

Then we, as readers, would have supplied the rest. And, in doing so – in decoding the reference, and ‘completing’ the communication – we would have experienced a very, very small frisson of pleasure. (‘Ah yes, I get it – which came first, the chicken or the egg?’)

Good persuasive writers make the reader a collaborator

Actually, all written communication is collaborative, when you think about it. I’m sitting here making marks appear on my screen, you’re sitting there deciphering them on the page, and supplying their meaning. I couldn’t do it without you. And the same would apply whatever I might be writing, from a sonnet to a software user’s manual.

But what I’m talking about here is the need for persuasive writers to make the reader a willing collaborator, by writing in such a way that she finds it enjoyable or satisfying to participate in an intimate act; communication between two people.

What this means, perhaps surprisingly, is that quite often the best persuasive writing is not – as it’s commonly supposed to be – the most straightforward, direct and unambiguous. Because, as we’ve just seen, when we spell things out, we risk depriving our reader of any possible pleasure or reward. Rather than a willing participant, she becomes a hapless bystander; someone who just happens to be standing in the path of an unstoppable torrent of words unleashed by us.

I’ll be talking quite a bit in the next section about some of the ways in which persuasive writers can make the reader into a willing collaborator. So for now, perhaps it’s enough to establish a general principle – which is that when we write persuasively we need to deliberately leave ‘space’ in our work to allow the RWARBTL (you remember, the Reader Who Always Reads Between The Lines) to roam freely. Because, as a willing collaborator, there’s a far better chance that she will respond in the way we want – which, in turn, will make the result we’re aiming for more likely.

Content: you guessed, it’s all about your reader

As you may have noticed, so far I’ve said a lot more about how to write than about what to write. For example, a few pages back, I gave our friend with the aching void in his love life a kicking not for claiming to have a good sense of humour, but for the way in which he attempted to communicate it.

But if he had possessed the skills to capture in words his encyclopaedic knowledge of Benny Hill’s work or his love of malicious practical jokes, or whatever it was he meant by GSOH, would that have been the right thing to focus on in his advertisement? Well, possibly. But only if his main aim in advertising was to get replies from potential partners who shared his particular kind of SOH.

Sorry, once again, if that sounds gob-smackingly obvious. But bad writers get this wrong all the time. They sit down to write thinking, ‘What do I want to tell my reader?’ Good ones think, ‘What do I have to say which will help to get the result I want?’ Or perhaps, rather more long-windedly, ‘What do I have to say which, bearing in mind what I know about my reader, will trigger the response that’s most likely to lead to the result I want?’

In short, what a persuasive writer writes is dictated by the reader and the result, no less than how a persuasive writer writes.

If it doesn’t make the result you want more likely, leave it out

Does this sound cynical? I hope not. Because I’m absolutely not advocating lying, distorting the facts or in any way being economical with the truth. On the contrary, I’m talking about the vital importance for persuasive writers of being brutally honest with themselves; of looking at the story they have to tell and asking themselves what they can (truthfully) say that their reader might conceivably find interesting, useful or enjoyable. And then, discarding absolutely everything else.

I don’t care if you have a great sense of humour, a degree in History of Art, in-depth knowledge of Neuro Linguistic Programming, over 20 years’ experience in fund management, a Mark 4 Cortina in mint condition or a revolutionary new low temperature smelting technique; unless it makes the result you want more likely, out it goes.

So what should you include, in the way of content, next time you sit down to write persuasively? Hard for me to answer, since I don’t know whether you’re planning a passionate polemic in support of animal rights or a poster for a car boot sale. But I can give you one piece of positive advice about how to arrive at what you should be saying …

Remember that all persuasive writing is competitive

In my line of work, that goes without saying. All commercial organisations have competitors, so when I write about their products or services, it’s safe to assume that their customers will want to know what makes them different from/better than those of their competitors. That, in essence, is what advertising does. Sometimes, it does this job in a very direct, gloves-off kind of way, drawing direct comparisons (‘Why buy crummy old Brand X, with its obsolete technology, when you can have our new whizzy state-of-the-art model for the same price?’). But even when the advertiser doesn’t resort to ‘knocking copy’ – and most don’t, for fear of getting into a fight they might lose – the basic aim is the same: to present a case that gives the potential customer a reason for choosing the product or service in question, in preference to others of a similar kind.

And I can’t think of any kind of true persuasive writing where the same principle doesn’t apply. Of course, depending on what you’re writing, you may not have competitors in the same sense as a company advertising its new range of organic ready meals, or its online garden design business. But whatever you’re selling – your religious beliefs, an idea for restructuring your company’s salesforce, that old fridge-freezer cluttering up the cellar – your reader always has other options.

So, before you write, you need to be very clear about what, from your reader’s point of view, your competitive advantage actually is.

What if there’s no competitive advantage?

I said a moment ago that, in the world of professional persuasive communication, the need for a clear competitive advantage is self-evident. But actually, that isn’t quite true. You’d be amazed how often I’ve attended briefing sessions where none of the highly paid advertising and marketing people present has been able to give me one really good reason why our target audience should choose the product or service in question. ‘To be honest,’ they confide, looking around to make sure they won’t be overheard, ‘there really isn’t anything that special or different about it.’

Perhaps I’m supposed to be won over by such refreshing candour; but I’m not. Because I believe that unless you can make a case for whatever you’re selling that sets it apart from its competitors, then you should save your breath.

The problem, of course, is that in most fields real, sharply defined points of difference between one product and another are in short supply. One washing powder is pretty much like another. And these days, when good ideas are quickly imitated, the same increasingly applies to computers, prepared salads and off-set mortgages.

So what’s to be done when your ‘product’ doesn’t have an obvious edge over its rivals?

In search of the USP

Way back in advertising history, one of the big ad American agencies tackled this problem by inventing something called the Unique Selling Proposition (or USP). As the name suggests, the idea was to formulate an offer or promise to the potential customer that no competitor could duplicate. And they rigorously applied this formula for effective advertising to every product they advertised. No ad could ever be produced unless it contained a USP.

This resulted in some fairly bizarre claims. For example, I fondly remember (though you’re probably too young) the chocolate bar that promised us ‘a hazelnut in every bite’. Was this claim true? Did exhaustive testing take place in order to substantiate it? And, if so, how many bites, of what size, did the testers take before they were satisfied that this particular USP stood up?

No matter. In that earlier, more innocent age, it was enough, apparently, for advertisers to look closely at their product and find something – anything – that could be seen to set it apart. How much times have changed can be seen from a more recent confectionery commercial which ended, you may remember, with Vic Reeves informing us that the chocolate bar in question was ‘flat, with a slightly rippled underside’ – a post-modern USP if ever there was one.

The relevance to you? I’d say the inventors of the USP were absolutely right, in principle, to acknowledge that all persuasive communication needs to present a competitive case; and that, further, when an obvious point of difference doesn’t exist, it’s up to the communicators to search until they find one.

Where they went wrong was in applying this principle over-literally. They believed that the product itself would, if scrutinised closely enough, always yield a USP. Through modern eyes, this looks absurd. We’re perfectly well aware that, in many areas, differences between products are negligible going on non-existent.

And yet we still form preferences, and make choices. Based on what? At this point, we risk a lengthy and tedious diversion down the twisty and overgrown track that leads to an Understanding of the Theory of Brands. But I think we can spare ourselves that. For our purposes here, it’s enough to observe that, when there’s little or nothing between products, we choose the one that talks to us in the voice we find most engaging.

The USP is dead, long live the CP!

So let’s agree to abandon the USP as unworkable, and replace it with what I’m going to call the CP, or Competitive Promise. By that, I mean a clear statement of why whatever you have to sell has an edge over the competition (whatever form that may take). Unlike a USP, this usually won’t be based upon a single measurable, factual point of difference. Instead, a CP will often be a synthesis of substance and style. What you have to offer your reader may not, strictly speaking, be unique; but the combination of what you have to offer and how you offer it may be enough to tip the balance in your favour.

An example? For once, having numerous children is about to prove rather handy. Because, as I’m trying to work on this, my elder daughter Laura is pestering me about a letter she’s writing. She’s going to university in about six weeks’ time, and she urgently needs to earn some money before then. Yesterday, she called into our local branch of Borders bookshops, and they told her to drop them a CV together with a covering letter explaining what she feels she has to offer them.

What does Laura have to offer Borders? Suppressing a father’s blind partisanship, I’d have to say nothing unique. There are loads of bright, personable, impoverished students out there, looking for a not-too-taxing way of making some money before term begins. But she does have at least one competitive advantage: she does genuinely love books and reading – not something every 19-year-old can say. And, even by the standards of today’s socially adept young, she is exceptionally confident and outgoing in her dealings with people (as the part-time and voluntary jobs on her CV suggest).

So what is the CP on which she should base her letter? Something like:

A book-lover who gets a buzz out of dealing with people.

Or, to spell out the promise more explicitly:

Hiring me will be good for your business because … I’ve got the people skills, and I know my E M Forster from my J K Rowling.

Let’s be clear, I’m not suggesting that these are the words Laura should use; just that this is what she should set out to communicate. It isn’t, to be honest, an immensely strong Competitive Promise: if she has a rival for the job who used to work in a bookshop on Saturdays, then she’s unlikely to be the successful candidate. But, working with the material available, it’s about the best she can do. And if she can find the right words to bring this CP to life for the reader – to make herself sound as bright and lively and literate as she claims to be – then she might be in with a chance.

All of which means, as you may have noticed, that I’ve come full circle. I started this chapter by talking about the importance of how you write in influencing your reader, her response and the result; half way through, I turned my attention to the importance of what you write. And here I am, almost at the end of the chapter, concluding that, in the vast majority of persuasive writing, how and what you write can’t possibly be separated. And so, finally, that brings us to …

The rousing call to action

Do you know what I mean by that phrase? It’s the bit at the end of an ad that says something like, ‘Hurry down to your local XYZ store today, while this offer lasts’ or ‘Call us today on the number below to find out more’.

In the snootier, more self-important advertising agencies – the kind where the copywriters all think they are Quentin Tarantino, and they refer to TV ads for toilet cleaner as ‘films’ – such things are rather frowned upon. Putting the phone number or web address in bold type ruins the minimalist perfection of the art director’s lay-out.

But I think a nice, clear call to action hardly ever goes amiss. Provided you’re polite, what possible harm can there be in telling your reader what you would like her to do next, and how she should go about it?

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about the general principles of good persuasive writing. To find out more about how to apply them in practice, simply turn the page and read on.

Go on, do it right now.