Six weeks ago my buddy Jesse convinced me to sign up for an Improv class.

“It’ll be fun,” he said. “We get to perform again. Plus, you can probably write it off on your tax return.”

You may know improv from the TV show Who’s Line Is It Anyway, or perhaps your local theater sports troupe.

In improv, there’s no script. No rehearsed lines. Just a suggestion from the audience and the improvisers make stuff up. Create a scene – a story – in real time.

Improv is great training for “living in the moment.” (You don’t have time to worry about what you’ll say next. Be spontaneous or die.)

And it’s also good training ground for telling a good sales story, because it teaches the value of going deep with a single idea.

It just takes one

You might think that the key to a great improviser is an abundance of ideas. (“What crazy thing will he say next?”)

Well, that’s not quite right.

Our teacher explained the difference between a raw rookie improviser from a master.

The rookie, he said, keeps throwing out one idea after another in a scene, hoping that one of them will stick. These ideas are called “offers.”

For example, let’s say a group of improvisers gathers on the stage. The emcee asks the audience for a location. “A flower shop!” shouts a tipsy lad in the back row.

Okay, a flower shop. Nothing sexy there. So one of the improvisers might throw out this opening offer: the flowers getting hungry for manflesh (a la Little Shop of Horrors.)

Lot of places to go from there.

But the rookie player who talks next stalls the action, because he keeps throwing out offers …

“The president just arrived in the flower shop.”

“My character is actually an alien who is trying to take over the world.”

“It’s actually not a flower shop at all – we’re just kids in a school play.”

The rookie believes that more is better. Keep piling on the zaniness. He gets manic about it.

But the experienced master does it different.

She takes one premise and runs with it, going deeper and deeper to find out what makes that story tick.

So if the flowers have the munchies, she might don the role of a nutritional adviser and lecture them on eating “paleo”– sure, manflesh might be tasty, she says, but it’s just not natural. Time for some diet discipline focusing on the big three: water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide.

Next thing you know, she’ll have them crossfitting and puking up their fertilizer.

When you go deep, you make interesting discoveries. When you skate on the surface, you stick to clichés.

The same can be true for marketing stories.

The raw rookie copywriter is often guilty of trying to do too much in an ad: prove too many points, pile on too many benefits, list too many features … hoping that the sheer number will overwhelm the prospect into submission.

Problem is, he never digs deep enough to make a case for any of the points, and so the ad falls flat.

Result? Crying copywriter on the living room couch.

The master will take his time on a single point – diving deeper and deeper, “dimensionalizing” the product … looking at the same thing from several different perspectives, finding the nuances.

He brings a rifle to this hunt, hoss – not a shotgun.

Now, as Gene Schwartz tells us, we can still unsling the shotgun and nail a bunch of points in rapid succession later on in an ad – this is where “bullets” can make their mark.

But for the majority of the copy, it’s best to focus on just one big idea. If we have the courage to do this, we may knock one out of the park.

The STORY

Consider Jim Rutz’s famous “Read This Or Die” direct mail piece for the newsletter Alternatives.

Although the body of the ad tours a host of different ailments, the central theme is repeated throughout: the worst diseases in the world have been cured … somewhere on earth.

The hero behind the story is David G. Williams, the intrepid health explorer who trots the globe hunting down these esoteric cures.

His story is woven throughout the direct mail package, punctuating the sales copy with constant reminders of the man behind the mission.

We hear of David …

“Backpacking in Japan … trekked through the Australian outback … a research trip to Nicaragua [with a thank you note from the country’s president] … schmoozing with tribal elders around a campfire in icy Nepal … swatting tse-tse flies in African jungles, or enjoying a croissant and tea with executives in a zillion-dollar research facility in France.”

I’m sure there are many stories that Jim Rutz could have told about Williams. But he focused on just one – William’s global exploration of cures.

The theme of the sales piece is established early on. After the brass-balls headline, the very next sentence reads: “Today you have a 95 percent chance of eventually dying from a disease or condition for which there is already a known cure somewhere on the planet.” The rest of the piece – including the travelogue of Williams – elaborates on this one essential point.

Rutz announces the theme and dives deeper and deeper, convincing us in the process.

The MORAL

Find one “offer” and go deep with it.

 

Learn more about using the power of stories in marketing in Scott’s marketingwithstory.com.

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THE AMAZING 60-SECOND SALES HOOK THAT CREATES
AN INSTANT BOND WITH YOUR BEST PROSPECTS
PLUS: Get fill-in-the-blank templates that instantly establish “Know, Like, and Trust”
THE AMAZING 60-SECOND SALES HOOK THAT CREATES
AN INSTANT BOND WITH YOUR BEST PROSPECTS
PLUS: Get fill-in-the-blank templates that instantly establish “Know, Like, and Trust”
 
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