Overcoming Sales Objections Begins Before the Three NOTs, at a Single Adjudication

Ask a reader why they did not read a piece and nothing comes back.

The memory of not reading it was never formed. It entered their field of vision, a few words’ worth of processing took place, and still, asked afterwards, they often do not remember having seen the piece at all. From the writer’s side, all that remains is the fact that nothing happened.

That blank settles the direction of the prescriptions. Since the reason is unavailable, the cause gets placed at “the pull was weak”. Strengthen the heading, shorten the opening, insert a figure. All of these work on the side of attracting attention.

Readers do not read what is written. Reading it, they do not believe it. Believing it, they do not act. This arrangement has long been shared among people who write to sell — the three walls, or the three NOTs. All three genuinely occur. As an arrangement it is accurate, and it names the objections a piece of writing has to get past.

Beyond that, another step sits ahead of the three. Before any of them, the reader adjudicates whether this piece is addressed to them. A piece adjudicated as not addressed to them is not left unread; it is not registered as an object to read. The blank of a reason that never surfaces occurs at this step.

Three things get resolved here. First, what working each of the three attitudes performs. Second, what happens as devices for crossing accumulate. Third, what can be written in order to pass the first adjudication. All three are set out in a form checkable from the writing itself, rather than from figures after publication.

Some things cannot be handed over. What the reader treats as their own territory is not visible to the writer. Handing over material for the adjudication is as far as this side reaches. And whether a departing reader was outside the audience or was inside it and failed to be reached is not distinguished by the figures either.

The techniques of prescription for each of the three walls are also left out. How to build a heading, how to arrange grounds, how to design the sentence prompting action — explanations already exist in quantity. What this piece handles is the framing those prescriptions assume. Change the framing and the same prescriptions get applied at different places.

The arrangement itself is not discarded. That a piece has to be read, believed and acted on does not change. What moves is a single point: whether the three are placed as resistance to the writer, or as workings functioning on the reader’s side. Placed as resistance, the only available move is to lower them. And lowering also lowers whatever those workings were carrying.

What Circulates as the Three NOTs of Copywriting

The three NOTs line up three attitudes a reader takes towards a piece of writing. Not reading. Not believing. Not acting. These stand in the way in sequence, so the writer is said to need a response to each.

The prescription for the first wall gets shown. Pull them in with the heading. Create interest in the opening. Set it out readably. Use bullets and bold so it can be skimmed.

The prescription for the second follows. Show grounds. Put out track record and figures. Publish user voices. State the writer’s background. Include the inconvenient parts.

The prescription for the third follows too. Make plain what to do. Simplify the steps. Prompt the decision with a deadline or a bonus. Attach a guarantee to reduce the worry about loss.

An account of the order gets attached. Without being read there is no opportunity to be believed, so the advice is to work on the first wall first.

As descriptions of practice these are accurate. Pieces that go unread genuinely are common, and it is true that unfounded claims are not believed. Where the entrance to action is not shown, even a reader who wants to move cannot.

Draw out what the arrangement assumes. The three attitudes are organised as resistance on the reader’s side. Resistance exists, so the writer lowers it. A problem of getting past.

The prescriptions are not in error. Setting things out readably, showing grounds, making the route explicit — all of these work for the reader. That is the premise here.

Organise them fully as resistance, though, and what the three are working for falls out of view. Not reading has a function. Not believing has a function. Lower something that carries a function and, to that extent, something else occurs.

And there is resistance that may be lowered and resistance that may not. Resistance caused by unclarity should be lowered. Lower the resistance that belongs to judging — the working that checks whether something is true — and readers who act without checking increase. From outside, the two look like the same absence of response.

The metaphor of a wall carries something of its own. It places the writer and the reader in opposing positions. In a framing of opposition, getting past becomes the objective. What becomes of that reader after the crossing does not enter the metaphor.

Remove the metaphor and the same three line up differently. Not reading is the allocation of attention; not believing is a stance towards a form; not acting is an unfinished judgement. All three are workings operating correctly on the reader’s side. Arranged this way, the question of prescription changes too. Not how to cross, but what to hand to that working.

Before the Three Comes a Single Adjudication

What a reader does first, faced with a piece of writing, is not the decision whether to read.

It is the adjudication of whether it is addressed to them. What is adjudicated as not addressed drops out of view without even passing through a decision not to read.

The adjudication is fast. A few words of heading, the first sentence, the level at which the problem is handled. From these, whether this is their territory gets settled.

A piece that fails the adjudication is recorded as “not read”. It looks as though it stopped at the first of the three walls. In fact it ended before them.

The difference matters because the direction of the prescription changes. Stop at the first wall and readability or a stronger pull will work. Fall at the adjudication and strengthening does little. Write an unaddressed piece in strong language and what you have is a strong unaddressed piece.

Suppose an article written for people in employment is seen by someone five years into working for themselves. However strong the heading, that person usually does not read it. The reason is not that it is uninteresting but that it is not about them.

Write broadly and more people pass the adjudication — that move exists. More do pass. Fewer remain after passing. Widen the scope and the piece lands, for every reader, at “related in a general way, but not about me”. The adjudication passes and they fall at the next step.

The material for the adjudication is not only naming. The level at which the problem is handled, the vocabulary used, what is assumed as given — adjudication happens on these too. Without being named, readers can tell whether it is about them.

And the adjudication is not fully controllable by the writer, because what counts as their own territory is settled by the reader and never reported back. What is controllable is placing the material for the adjudication early.

The adjudication has a property arising from its speed. Being fast, it leaves no memory when it fails. The blank of asking readers for a reason and getting nothing comes from here. Readers do not remember “the article I did not read”, so asking afterwards produces nothing.

Place the material early and the adjudication finishes quickly. Finishing quickly is to your benefit as well. The sooner readers outside the audience leave, the further the concrete detail of the body can be moved towards the audience. A body written with breadth fills up with detail that lands on nobody.

Design the piece to pass the adjudication and those who do not pass show up plainly. In figures they appear as drop-off. Whether the drop-off consists of people outside the audience leaving early, or people inside it failing to be reached, is not distinguished on the figures’ side. Try to lower the drop-off rate without that distinction and you move towards thinning the material for the adjudication.

Not Reading Is Not Idleness but the Working of Selection

Readers do not read because they are allocating attention.

Against the volume of what is placed in front of them, the volume that can be processed is limited. A working that settles what to process and what to discard is therefore always running. It operates ahead of conscious decision.

There is an old experiment on the working of selection. The communications engineer Colin Cherry played different voices into the left and right ears simultaneously and had participants attend to one side (Cherry, 1953, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25(5), 975–979). The content on the unattended side was barely reported at all.

This is an experiment on simultaneous auditory presentation, not a measurement of skimming past text. What it indicates is a direction: information that attention is not on does not remain as content, even where it arrives.

The practical implication is plain. Many pieces that go unread have not failed to enter the eye; it entered and then fell outside the objects of processing. That it fell is not something the reader is aware of either.

“Getting read”, then, contains two operations. The operation of attracting attention, and the operation of being selected as an object for attention. The first moves on strength, the second on relevance.

A strong heading attracts attention. After it attracts, if the content is not their territory, processing drops it there. Raise the strength of the pull and the point at which it drops moves a few words later.

Without pulling first, relevance does not get across either — as an order, that is right. Pulling and showing relevance, though, coexist within the same few words. “For people with no time” pulls weakly and is highly relevant. “How to triple your day” pulls strongly with vague relevance. The way to have both is to write the problem you handle concretely.

The working of selection does not always operate correctly. It sometimes adjudicates as unnecessary something the reader needs. What the writer can do is hand over the material for the adjudication; the adjudication itself belongs to the reader.

Accept selection as a working and the responses available for not being read shrink, because the available move narrows to “show the relevance accurately”. Fewer moves is inconvenient, though it ends sooner than a state of repeatedly playing moves that do not work. And once the moves narrow to one, the time freed goes into raising the precision of that one.

Not Believing Is Directed at the Form, Not at the Writer

A reader who does not believe is not necessarily doubting that writer.

What is doubted, in most cases, is the form. What writing of a familiar shape has delivered in the past. That record builds a stance towards the form.

The structure has been organised in consumer research. The marketing researchers Marian Friestad and Peter Wright set out a framework in which people, through repeated exposure to persuasion attempts, accumulate knowledge for coping with them (Friestad & Wright, 1994, Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31). At the point where the persuasive intent is recognised, the coping side begins to operate.

This is a theoretical statement integrating existing research, not an experiment measuring the effect of a specific advertisement. What it indicates is a direction: once the recipient recognises persuasive intent, how the content is received changes.

There are two implications in practice. First, the doubt is directed at the form, not at the writer as an individual. Second, use that form and you inherit the record attached to it.

“You will lose out if you do not know this” has been used in a great many pieces. Readers know what followed that opening. Whatever the content, the stance takes up the same position.

Thicken the grounds, then, and belief follows — not necessarily. Grounds work. They work, though, where the persuasive stance is not strongly in place. Where the stance is in place, grounds are read as material for persuasion too. The more figures there are, the more suspect it can read.

Not every form carries a record. Records attach to forms that were widely used. A form not in use carries none yet.

One way to remove the record is not hiding the persuasive intent. Write “this is an announcement for my own product” at the start and the reader is released from the work of inferring the intent. The coping stance remains, but attention is no longer taken up hunting for a hidden intent, so the content itself can be examined.

State the intent and the piece is confirmed as an announcement. Being confirmed, some people do not read it. In exchange, those who do read it read the content itself. Hide it and more people read, and what is being read is the intent rather than the content.

Which to choose is settled by what you want left behind after reading. Prioritise the number and hiding is the advantage; prioritise the content being read and stating it is. A form that does both has not so far turned up.

Not Acting Divides Into Three

A state in which action is not occurring is not one state.

The first type is a state with a check outstanding. Whether they can do it too, whether the conditions match — not finished. Pushing hardly moves this state; pushed, they tend to abandon the check and tip towards leaving.

The second type is a state where the route is unclear. They have decided, but where to apply, or what to do next, is not clear. This state resolves by making the entrance explicit.

The third type is a state where the priority is currently low. They accept the content but have other things to do first. This state cannot be moved from the writer’s side.

From outside, the three are the same “not acting”. The moves are different for each. Material for the outstanding check, an entrance for the unclear route, time for the low priority.

Suppose a hundred readers read an announcement and did not register. Play the move of “strengthen the sentence prompting action” without knowing the composition, and it works mainly on the second type. The first type tends to leave, and little happens for the third.

Since the composition is unknown, all you can do is play a move that works on everyone. There is no such move. What can be done where the composition is unknown is to place the response to all three at once. Write the material, make the entrance explicit, and create no deadline. The third of these is the condition for not shedding the low-priority reader.

This is not to say deadlines may never be placed. A deadline that exists as a fact is material for judgement. A manufactured deadline cuts off the third type. That reader is one who might have moved three months later.

Writing that leaves room for judgement is itself handled in the principles of sales copy. What is handled here is where that writing lands within the composition of readers who do not act.

There is one way to get a sense of the composition. Where you can ask the readers who did not move what was unclear, it emerges there. Where you cannot, you can still reread what you wrote and count what is handed to each of the three. If there is not one section of material, nothing has been handed to the first type.

Divide the composition and the available moves appear to shrink, since no single move drives all three. In exchange, the state of playing moves that do not work becomes visible.

The proportions among the three vary with what you handle. Where judging costs something — it takes time, it is hard to stop midway, conditions differ by person — the first type predominates. Where the amount is small and stopping is easy, the second sits at the centre. Where the proportions are unknown, responding to all three with equal weight is the safe course. The bias only becomes clear once a few people you can actually ask have appeared.

The Three Do Not Arrive in Sequence — They Operate Simultaneously

The metaphor of a wall produces an image of three standing in sequence, but the three operate simultaneously.

Reading while doubting, doubting while weighing whether to act. Deciding whether to believe after finishing the reading is not what happens.

Simultaneity has one consequence. The stance taken up at an earlier step settles how the later steps get read. Where persuasive intent shows strongly at the opening, the grounds in the body are read as material for persuasion too.

Prescribe for the three separately, therefore, and they stop meshing. Read them in with a strong heading and convince them with thick grounds — in that combination, the first prescription tends to lower the effect of the second.

Suppose an article enters with a heavily stoked heading and places careful grounds in the body. The grounds do get read, and they get read at a discount. The strength of the heading applies as a coefficient to everything after it.

The reverse combination exists too. Enter with a measured heading and place grounds in the body. Fewer people read, and no discount occurs.

Without being read it means nothing, so pull first — the order is right. The parting point is that there are two kinds of pulling. Pulling by strength and pulling by relevance. The first produces a discount; the second rarely does. A heading that pulls by relevance works powerfully only on the intended reader.

Pulling by relevance is available only where the audience is settled. Where it is not, what can be written is general strength alone. In that case the issue is not the order but the audience.

And the coefficient does not operate only within one article. The same writer’s past pieces settle how the next one is read. The unit is not a single article.

The accumulation runs the other way as well. Where pieces that produce no discount continue, the coefficient falls. In the lowered state, even a claim written modestly gets taken as it stands. That the same sentence arrives with different weight depending on the writer is this difference in coefficient.

Write “this works” to someone who has read you for years and it is taken as written. Write the same sentence to a first-time reader and it is discounted. The text is identical; only the coefficient differs.

Once simultaneity is understood, prescriptions can no longer be verified one at a time, because changing the heading moves how the body is received. A form that changes one place and compares the figures has difficulty operating accurately on this structure.

Enlarge the unit of comparison and the problem shrinks. Rather than swapping only the heading, write two versions of a whole article and compare. Enlarging the unit, though, means that when a difference appears you cannot tell what produced it. Measure finely and it is inaccurate; measure accurately and it is not fine. The trade does not dissolve, so settling which side you take in advance is quicker.

Devices for Crossing Strengthen the Wall

Once devices for crossing the wall are shared, the manner of crossing becomes familiar too.

A familiar crossing speeds up the adjudication, because readers can tell at the sight of the shape that this is that sort of piece. Once they can tell, processing drops it there.

The process runs one way. A device that worked gets shared, sharing makes it stop working, and a stronger device gets sought. Only the level of strength rises.

And the raised level seldom returns. The record accumulated on the reader’s side does not disappear. Writers who never raised anything are read within the raised level all the same.

“The conventional wisdom in this industry has changed” once pulled. Now the shape alone gives away what follows. Being given away, it tends to go unread.

Collecting devices for crossing therefore has a limit. By the time they are collected, they are already shared. What is shared has become harder to pass the adjudication.

What to do instead: hand material to the adjudication side. Rather than crossing, make the adjudication run correctly. Place early who the piece is addressed to, what it handles, and what it does not. The intended reader passes the adjudication and the unintended reader leaves quickly.

This does not increase the number of people who read. What increases is the proportion of readers who are in the audience. Where the total is the objective, this approach does not get selected.

And it takes time. Until readers who passed the adjudication accumulate, the figures do not move. A strong device works the same day; this can take months.

The time lag has a consequence for judgement. Compare the two side by side and the strong device tends to look like the better result. At the moment of comparison, one has not produced a result yet. Read “no result yet” as “did not work” and the judgement tends to tip towards strength.

In an environment where the level has risen, measured writing sometimes reads as lacking confidence. The surroundings are strong, so it looks weak by comparison. This is a fact, and it is more accurate to say there is no remedy. It becomes a choice of accepting it or matching the level.

Choose acceptance and what tells is the period sustained, not the score of any one piece. A state in which this writer’s pieces can be read without discount only comes about after several have been read. Throughout that period the figures come out lower than for a writer matching the level. Whether the period gets read as a record of failure or as a period whose result is not yet in settles whether it continues.

Showing That Something Is Addressed to Them Is a Specification of Range, Not Strength

Writing “this is addressed to you” is not enough to pass the first adjudication.

What passes is a concrete statement of the range handled. Whose situation, in what state, and which problem. With the range written, the reader can adjudicate whether they are inside it.

Readers not inside it leave. This is not a loss. Those readers are spared spending time on a piece that does not fit.

Specifying the range includes specifying what is not handled. “This article does not cover how to gather them.” With what is excluded written down, readers can adjudicate quickly whether what they are looking for is here.

“How to become better at writing” and “what to do when you collected the top headings, built the structure, and still are not read” differ in the speed of adjudication. The second is passed only by readers with that experience. For readers who pass, it is about them.

Narrow the range and readers do not grow. The worry has grounds. The total does become harder to grow. A piece with its range written, though, becomes easier for the intended reader to find. The more concrete the words they are searching with, the more surely they arrive at a piece written in those words.

The range can be written only where it is settled. Where it is not settled who the piece addresses, the range cannot be written either. In that case what cannot be written is not the range but the design a step before it.

And specifying the range is not work confined to the opening. The concrete detail handled in the body, the vocabulary used, what is assumed as given. Where these do not match the range, readers who passed at the opening fall out midway.

A mismatch takes a shape that is hard for the writer to see, because the combination that arises easily is an opening written for a narrow addressee and a body written to be intelligible to anyone. Readers who entered through the narrowed opening look in the body for detail addressed to them. Where they do not find it, the specification of range was a signboard only.

The determination lands by counting the concrete detail in the body. Whether that detail is an event inside the range specified at the opening. Where examples outside the range predominate, what is narrowed is only the opening.

State the range and what can be written shrinks, since material outside it can no longer be included. What is removed becomes another article. Content that was packed into one piece divides, so the count of articles rises.

A rising count is both a burden and an advantage. The volume per piece falls and the number of writing occasions rises. And where pieces of differing range line up, readers become able to select the one that lands on them. Either hold the breadth inside one piece, or hold as many pieces as there is breadth. From the adjudication’s side, the second hands over more material.

Reread the Opening Lines Alone and Count the Material for the Adjudication

Whether the piece takes a shape that passes the first adjudication can be settled by rereading the opening lines. There is no need to go back through the body.

See whether a reader outside the audience can leave within those lines. If they cannot, the range is not written. An opening that “applies to anyone” is an opening that hands over no material for the adjudication. A reader who cannot adjudicate does not leave at once; they hold off, read a few lines, and then leave.

Next, see whether the pull you used works by strength or by relevance. A pull by strength applies a discount coefficient to everything after it. A pull by relevance does not. Reread the heading and the opening and check whether you can say in one word which it is.

Finally, imagine the composition of readers who did not act, divided into three. Readers with a check outstanding, readers unclear on the route, readers with a low priority. Confirm what the piece hands to each. Hand something to only one and nothing happens for the other two.

None of these looks at the quantity of response. Quantity is a result, and it sits on a different axis from whether the adjudication was passed.

There is something the three do not adjudicate: whether the content is of value to the reader. Range written, no discount occurring, composition addressed, and still not wanted — that is a correct conclusion. This adjudication cannot be performed on the writing’s side.

What can be performed is only the step before writing. Whose situation, in what state, is being handled — is that settled. Where it is not, the range cannot be written and the first adjudication is left to chance.

How many lines the opening should run, which words to pull with, how finely to write the range — no figures are offered for these. They vary with the problem handled and the reader’s position. Handing over a rule of thumb would settle the allocation without looking at those conditions.

What is left over is the account of the blank where the reason for not reading never surfaces. The reason a reader cannot supply the reason they did not read is that an adjudication took place there, and adjudications leave no memory. With no reason available, strengthening the pull is guesswork. There is one place where guesswork can be given up: whether you placed the material for the adjudication early is something you can confirm on your own side.

How to write those opening lines is handled by how to write a lead paragraph. For the mechanism by which a reader judges on cues rather than content, see psychological triggers before the list. Writing that hands over a reason to move while leaving room for judgement is set out in the principles of sales copy. An adjudication happening on the reader’s side, leaving no trace in memory or record, is not confined to the opening. How far that can be handled at all sits in the technique of verbalisation.