What’s the difference between desire and passion (and why does it matter)?
We know we can’t sell anything unless there is at least a spark of desire from our audience (or client, or customer, or prospect etc.). Why?
Note: read the first two parts of this series if you haven’t already:
But what about passion? Here’s Google’s definition: “strong and barely controllable emotion”. That sounds like desire on steroids to me.
Imagine having a prospect so fired up they can barely control their emotions. Assuming they were of the passionate kind, I think a sale would be forthcoming pretty quickly, right.
And is that not what we’re all looking for from our copy – passion? If so, then we need to grab that spark of desire and amplify it until the reader can barely control their emotion.
You couldn’t get a clearer piece of advice. But what happens when we try? Melodrama. Getting anyone into that state requires an extraordinary degree of control and personal knowledge about them.
There are two sides to this story though. Passion isn’t always positive. When we get angry we see the opposite side – it’s still passionate, but passionate about hate or injustice or something that so breaks our own code of ethics or integrity we can’t stand it any more – and so we take action.
You can see this everyday in politics. The politics of hate is strong right now. And by manipulating it, people can take control of entire countries.
That’s selling carried to its extreme, and what is also interesting is that it’s being done by video, radio, and the written word – each one polished for its particular audience.
But there’s more to this desire/passion thing, and in part 4, we’ll go a little deeper. That’s coming next Saturday. Watch out for it.
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