Picture, for a moment, a young Dutch farm girl skipping through the dew-covered grass with a Dutch bonnet on her head and a Dutch bucket in her hand.

She’s skipping towards a cow her family recently purchased. They were really excited about this cow.

Winter was coming and food was scarce.

The family invested a lot of money to purchase this heifer. But it was worth it if they could feed themselves off of its milk, cheese, cream, butter and meat–if it had an attitude.

Our cheerful milk maid squats next to the cow, puts the bucket under it, grabs onto the udders, and proceeds to milk.

Only a little bit of smelly, watery liquid comes out.

The milk maid looks closely. The “cow” turned out to be a bull.

Our fair milk maiden proceeds to swear like a sailor.

Her family proceeds to starve.

Now, this hungry Dutch family might have saved themselves from starvation if they knew the art of purchasing a healthy cow.

Instead, they allowed the pushy salesman to get one over them.

Purchasing the services of a copywriter follows the same principles.

A lot of marketers and copywriters are out there pitching their services. A leader of a growing SaaS company can’t afford to make a wrong decision and hire junior talent for high-stakes work. SaaS leaders need marketers who are pro-actively and constantly sharpening their skills.

So what are the signs to look for in hiring a skilled B2B SaaS marketer?

Specifically, what are the behaviors you should look for in a marketer in general, and a copywriter in particular, to determine that they are committed to their craft and constantly improving?

Here are the top 3 signs

1.They Read. A Lot. 

The number one ingredient in copywriting is….. writing. it’s not learning 10 hacks guaranteed to bewitch people with hocus pocus. It’s not watching marketing gurus talking about how to make money online. And it’s certainly not neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

It’s writing.

Writing daily, even when there are no clients to serve.

But in order to write well, the copywriter needs to be addicted to reading.

Skilled copywriters approach reading in the same way Hollywood celebrities approach cocaine.

It’s obsessive.

It’s compulsive.

They need it to do their jobs. And when I say skilled copywriters read, I don’t mean speed-reading.

I mean active reading.

For example, I’m making it a regular practice to read 19th century fiction word by word. I make an effort to identify the adjectives, nouns, verbs, general sentence structure, etc. It may not seem fun to you but I ‘m learning to enjoy it.

Even more importantly. It helps me be a better writer.

In the same way a cow needs nutritious grass to produce decent milk, your marketer needs to nourish his or her mind to produce winning advertising for you.

If you’re talking to a marketer and they don’t seem well-read- that’s a red flag.

You just don’t want to risk your business on someone who doesn’t do the work of consistently putting fresh ideas and insights in their brain.

2.Curious & Observant. 

Direct marketing is selling multiplied.

Part of good salesmanship is being observant.

Similarly, your marketer needs to be observing what’s going on with prospects, trying to crawl into the minds of buyers, studying your product inside out, etc.

If your marketer strikes you as a curious person– that’s a good sign.

It’s a good sign because a major aspect of the copywriter’s job is research.

If not, you might want to consider dropping them like a stinky cow pie.

The reason? If they lack curiosity, it’ll be an ordeal for your marketer to do the in-depth research you need them to do to write winning promos.

Don’t believe research is important in marketing? Then read what one of my past clients has to say:

“When I have worked with copywriters in the past, I’ve needed to make massive edits as they didn’t spend the time to research and actually understand what it was I was selling. With Wes, he did massive research, and even though the “copy” was about 20 pages long, I had very few edits. 

With that shameless promotion out of the way, on to the 3rd and final sign of a blockbuster marketer.

3.They Are Always Aware of Buyer of Skepticism 

When your marketer is writing sales copy, they need to do so as if an imagined prospect was sitting across the table from them.

A prospect who is highly skeptical,suspicious, bored, easily confused, and with the attention span of a goldfish.

A prospect who cares diddly squat for how “creative” or “socially responsible” your ads and promos are.

What your marketer should do is communicate your promises to your prospect with maximum proof and believability.

What most marketers do, according to A-List copywriter David Deutsch, is just “shout louder”, in their promotions.

You’ve seen it before:

Piling on a long list of benefits

Using all caps

Throwing around exclamation marks like a drunk at a dart board,

Tossing an adjective word-salad in the turd that is their copy: “it’s amazing, it’s killer, it’s incredible, blah blah blah “

Imagine if it was one of these over-excited copywriters who sold the cursed cow to our poor Dutch milk maid:

“Step right up, young lady.! Are you in the market for a cow? Well, you’re in luck because I have the most amazing cow this side of Copenhagen!!!!! …It won’t just GIVE YOU MILK and it just won’t give you MEAT!!!! ……It’ll fertilize your tulip field! ……. This killer cow can scare away WOLVES!!….. It can cure your grandma’s urinary tract infection and stiffen up your granddaddy in the bedroom!!!…But wait, there’s MORE! Did I mention this cow is also a UNICORN!?!? 

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.  

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/