Dramatic Sales Writing

Separate but related is a quibble I have with
my reviewer not believing that travel is a
benefit for older men.

Now, here I can see that it's more emotionally
satisfying to paint a picture of travel than to
just say "travel," but my reviewer didn't like
that either.

What am I missing here?

1. About half of the entire travel market
consists of people over 55.

2. One fear of old age I have is of not
being able to travel due to physical
problems.

I love to travel and look forward to doing
a lot of it when I'm no longer tied down.

You can accuse me of confusing myself with
the market but the predominance of seniors
in the travel market suggests that my interest
in widely shared.

I'm sure that many older men prefer to stay home --
but I also believe that many men do want to
travel. Probably some of the men who stay home
WOULD travel -- if they could.

And since the men's supplement market as
described to us was of men with active
lifestyles, it stands to reason they'd be
more likely than the average old coot to want
to spend time traveling.

Stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud types are less
likely to care about their health anyway.

My mother is obviously not a man, but she's
in her early 80s and still travels to other
countries. About 10 years ago she went to the
Galapagos Island -- and that trip included a
walk through the jungle of Ecuador where she
went into some quicksand.

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So in my revision I worked harder to get to
deeper and more concrete benefits, but he
still told me that some of my benefits are
features and some of them bug me.

And they make me wonder how old my reviewer is!

For example -- relief of joint pain.

Excuse me, but isn't relief from pain in and of
itself a benefit? I'm no crybaby, but when I'm
in pain, I find it very . . . painful. When it
goes away, I'm quite thankful.

I suppose that the reviewer would have wanted me
to put in things like "jump, walk around easily"
etc. but I think just the cessation of pain is
a deep benefit.

For example, last November, I began having pain in
my left left. It moved around somewhat, but it
centered in my knee.

It didn't affect my activity level because -- frankly --
I couldn't afford to stop doing anything I was doing.
Yet, I walked more slowly than usual, but when I had to
walk someplace and go up steps -- I did it.

In March, it went away -- and I find not suffering
constant leg pain a great benefit. I just plain feel
better.

I don't know what caused the pain. I don't know why or
how it started or why it left me in 3 1/2 months, but
it did.

Even more dramatically, I listed the benefit of
reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

Like, how is that not a benefit?

Most people know that cancer is a horrible disease.
Most people are already afraid of it and most men are
already afraid of prostate cancer.

I don't see a good alternative to simply mentioning.
I could go into deep detail about how horrible it
would be to undergo chemotherapy, radiation therapy,
prostate surgery or die an agonizing death from the
cancer -- but that would be overkill for this
letter, I think.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most prospects
understand that protection from the Big C is
a benefit and losing to the Big C means
an ugly death. And most men already have that
fear for their own prostates.

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