"Why in the name of Beelzebub's bollocks would anyone even entertain the idea of hiring Tom Anyhow?"

Hiring a copywriter is not an easy task. They come in all flavours, shapes and forms with different sets of expertise and experiences. Some are even bold and ugly like me. They have different writing- and working styles.

Here are a few reasons why past clients have hired me, so you can better decide whether or not these factors match your criteria.

Reason #1: Focus Both On Maths And Psychology

Copywriting legend, the late Gary Halbert was fond of saying....

"Marketing is arithmetic and psychology."

With that in mind, the majority of marketers focus on psychology. Most of the minority, with a good understanding of numbers, focus on arithmetic. And a precious few focus on both.

Those who focus on both numbers and psychology get great results. Those who get lost either in psychology or in numbers alone get left behind. Good examples of understanding both are Boardroom, Agora and Google, just to name three.

I come from 16 years of engineering, so I think I have a pretty good understanding of numbers. And years of practice has taught me a lot about psychology.

Yes, initially I too focus on psychology, but when it comes to testing results, I can reverse the psychology into the resulting numbers and figure out what to tweak in order to get even better results.

Reason #2: 16 Years In Engineering

According to a 2008 survey by Broderick & Company, the top three criteria top-performing companies look for business developers are 1) "experience in our industry", 2) "expertise in our subject matter" and 3) "understanding of our business".

Before getting into IT marketing and copywriting in 1998, for 16 years I worked as a computer engineer, software developer, project manager and technical buyer. As a result of that stint, I gained understanding and insights of the high-tech sector that only a very few marketers and copywriters have.

As a technical buyer, I "digested" over 5,000 pages of proposals, sat through over 1,500 hours of sales presentations and participated in the purchase of some 610 million worth of high-end IT products and services. I've also talked to over 5,000 business owners and economic buyers about how they buy complex, high-ticket, hard-to-explain IT products and services.

Robert Collier, in his book, The Robert Collier Letters, says that marketing and copywriting are all about joining a conversation that's already going on in buyers' heads. If you've never been a buyer, all you can have is a wild-arsed guess as to what's going on your a buyers' heads. But a good guess is still a far cry from precise understanding.

Reason #3: Learnt My Craft From Some The Best Real Practitioners

When I got into B2B business development and copywriting in 1998, I discovered that universities had courses neither in B2B marketing nor in copywriting. MBA courses taught, and most of them still teach, B2C marketing, using McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble as case studies. They teach how to sell cheap commodities to the unwashed masses.

If that's what you sell, then you need one of those folks. My expertise lies in marketing and selling , new, unique, expensive, high-end and/or hard-to-explain solutions to specific niche markets represented by sophisticated buyers.

I wanted to learn how to market and sell new, complex, expensive and hard-to-explain high-tech products/services to sophisticated buyers in the business to business arena.

So, since academia was out, I sought out some of the best practitioners in the B2B world and have learnt from them.

The advantage is that my knowledge is not restricted to the confines of college classrooms, but are applicable in the real world, because I learnt it from real world practitioners, not from tenured professors (glorified civil servants) with safe and cushy jobs and secure government paycheques.

David Meerman Scott has some MBA students' comments in his blog post, entitled, Many Marketing And Communications Professors Are Criminals .

Student #1: "Did I waste my money on 1950s education here?"

Student #2: "I met only one professor in 4 years who understands today's world."

So, you decide whether your need an administrator, the "A" in MBA or a practitioner.

I've learnt my craft in "do or die" situations in the trenches of real world commerce, where my ideas either brought in new clients or I got fired.

Reason #4: Military Service

According to the Hinge Research Institute's study, entitled, How Buyers Buy Technology Services, the top three criteria for selecting professionals are 1) "team expertise". 2) "good reputation" and 3) "responsiveness".

Team expertise: People may bash the military because of Iraq or Afghanistan, but the military is still the undisputed master at building peak-performing teams that can perform even under pretty harsh conditions. And I mean real teams with interdependent members working under one single purpose towards one single goal.

Good reputation: According to the Gallup Organisation[1], the military is pretty much on the top of the reputation list. Dark green indicates June 2008 data and light green refers to June 2007 data.

Granted, the numbers have changed since 2008, but this is still a pretty good indicator.

Responsiveness: When you look back in history, you find that the military, in the developed world with democratically elected governments, has responded pretty fast to all sorts of threats against the countries they represent.

Briefly, former Coca Cola CEO, John Hayes; former State Street Bank CEO Marshall Carter; and AOL founder, Jim Kimsey call the military the "best damn business school". Tom Peters simply calls it the "Ultimate Professional Service Firm".

Kennedy's Executive Recruiter News reports that companies helmed by CEOs with a military background have outperformed the S&P 500 Index by as much as 20% over the past three, five and 10-year periods, says a study by Korn/Ferry International, entitled Military Experience and CEOs: Is There a Link?

Ex-military CEOs, interviewed by Korn/Ferry International, reveal six leadership traits that have served them exceptionally well in the boardroom:

I'm not saying that a military service is the bee's knees or even the wasp's nipples, but it seems it counts quite a bit.

So, with all this in mind, the best of luck to you to find the right person for your projects. So as Tom Philips, the president and CEO of Philips Publishing said many years ago at a Jay Abraham seminar...

"Hire the best and cry only once."

Of course, I'm not saying I'm the best. How would I know anyway? All I'm saying is that having or not having an MBA or some other formal credentials doesn't make a dickybird of a difference.

Not a sausage. Many of the skills and character traits buyers require in their copywriters can't be learnt in colleges. People develop them over time by working in the trenches and winning or losing. It's experimental. It's both explicit and tacit knowledge. It's both the science and the art of the craft.


[2]http://www.gallup.com/poll/108229/Confidence-Banks-Down-Sharply.aspx
and
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108142/Confidence-Congress-Lowest-Ever-Any-US-Institution.aspx. Continue where you've left off...