When I was in college, I read “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.”🤔
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a classic relationship book…📖
And the premise is pretty straight forward:
Most common relationship problems occur due to fundamental psychological differences between the sexes.
What I most remember from the book is the section about how men and women approach problems differently.
The author talks about how, generally, when a woman has a problem…
She doesn’t want a solution. She typically wants to be heard and understood…👂
So when a guy tries to fix it for her, it creates more conflict…
Because she doesn’t feel like he actually cares about what she’s going through…
Even though, from his perspective, he’s trying to show that he cares by offering a solution.
Now, here’s my take on this:
I think that the phenomenon the author talks about in the book is absolutely real…
But I don’t really think there’s a clear-cut line between men and women…
Rather, it seems to just come down more to personality types.
From my own personal experience…
Sometimes I’ll share a problem with my wife Laura and just want to be “understood”…
So when she tries to solve it, I get irked…
And sometimes, she’ll share something with me and just want help finding a quick “fix”…
So if I try to be too empathetic, she's like, “dude just help me figure this out.”
In other words, it's all much more nuanced, and you can’t make blanket statements that assign certain characteristics to an entire gender…
But still, the reason I'm writing about all of this…
Is because, I recently sent an email to my list where I talked about ADHD and Depression…
And I got a TON of responses.
And it was interesting to see how those replies really fell into two buckets:
Bucket 1: “Damn, thank you for sharing. I’ve had similar experiences, let me tell you about them.”
Bucket 2: “Hey, here’s a solution you can try!”
I call the folks in Bucket 1 “empathizers”…since they are essentially relating to what I said, then sharing their own experience as a way to further indicate how they really “get it”…
I call the folks in Bucket 2 “fixers”…since these are people who are trying to bring value by helping to resolve a perceived problem as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Now I really appreciate people in both groups…
But it’s interesting to note the difference…
And there's also an important copywriting insight buried in here too:
Generally, when it comes to writing effective, long-form direct response copy…
And actually, when it comes to just effective selling in general…
It is typically better to be an empathizer first…
And a fixer second.
That’s one of the reasons that emotional storytelling works so well in the lead (opening) of our sales copy…
The story should be one that creates a connection with the prospect…that mirrors their struggles and pain points…
And that shows them how the spokesperson has gone through those same struggles…before ultimately finding a solution.
In the sales world, this is called “building rapport”…
But it’s just as valuable and important in direct response copy…
And if you do this properly…
Then, once it becomes time to present a solution (aka your product or offer)…
There’s a much higher chance that the prospect will be open and receptive to it.
SPG
P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me, you can apply to join my list using this link
