Chris Collins Copywriting

Copywriter and conversion strategist for tech-focused brands like Sumo, Yesware, CoSchedule, and Concentric.

B2B / SaaS Conversion Copywriter

Association for Talent Development (ATD)

Planned course content and created instructional materials for New Employee Onboarding Certificate Program. Developed instructional materials for ATD Education programs, assisted with transition of existing courses to online delivery, and conducted market research to ensure successful positioning of new courses in development.

Instructional Design Specialist

Alexandria City Public Schools

Mathematics Teacher

Center City Public Charter Schools

Achievement Prep Public Charter School Network

Pathways to Housing DC

Clinical Care Coordinator

Hopewell Therapeutic Farm Community

Volunteer Program Facilitator

Manchester University

Visiting Instructor of Philosophy

University of Virginia

Instructor of Philosophy

Conversion Copywriter for B2B and SaaS

Here's what your message is up against for your reader's attention:

• 18 tabs
• 121 emails
• 4 articles
• 85 texts
• 125 Slack messages

Every single day.

You know how hard it is to get your attention. 

It's just as hard when it comes to your ideal buyers.

And it's nearly impossible when your messaging sounds just like every other product in your category. Even if you've got an awesome product.

To make an impact with buyers, you need strategic messaging that shows them what's unique about your solution – and why you're the only choice for them.


That's where I can help.

I'm Chris, a messaging strategist and copywriter trained by the best in the industry – along with research skills gained from a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Industry leaders like SwipeGuide and Canonical partner with me to elevate their messaging and establish a unique voice that rises above the competition.


"So what can you help me with?"

✅ Messaging strategy and web copy: We'll get inside the minds of your buyers, and turn your website into a high-performing sales tool

✅ Funnel strategy: We'll build a customer attraction system that moves your prospects through the buyer's journey, from awareness to purchase

✅ Email copywriting: We'll craft persuasive email campaigns that nurture your leads and turn them into paying customers


"OK, cool. But how do you do it?"

My unsexy, unbranded process isn't flashy – but it gets results. In four simple steps, we'll craft messaging that resonates with your ideal customers and sets you apart from the competition:

• Planning: We'll roadmap your project and create a clear schedule to get you the results you want
• Research: I'll do a deep dive into your audience, your product and the industry you operate in through customer interviews, a competitor audit, message mining, and more
• Writing + Revising: I take all that research and turn it into compelling, conversion-optimized copy
• Optimizing: I don't peace out when the project is over. I'll stick around to help find ways we can boost conversions – and continue to level up your messaging


"What kind of results can I expect?"

👍 Get a consistent brand narrative that resonates with your ideal buyers

👍 Stand out from your competitors with clear, conversational copy

👍 Attract more ideal customers with messaging that speaks to their needs and pain points

👍 Turn more visitors into leads – and leads into customers

If you're ready to level up your messaging, I'd love to chat. Send me a DM to set up an intro call today.

Chris Collins

Your confusing offer is costing you clients. I’ll help you fix it with a blend of positioning, productisation, and messaging.

Struggling to get leads and close clients? 
You're not bad at sales. 
Your offer is just hard to buy.

In all my years working with agencies and consultants, one thing has become clear…

Selling hard is a symptom. 
Your offer is the problem.

If you want to close more clients, you have two options:

Option 1 - Sell even harder:
❌ More cold pitches 
❌ More chasing leads 
❌ More discounts out of desperation

But you hate that stuff, right?

Option 2 - Make your offer more buyable.

That's where I come in.

I help agency founders and consultants design offers that practically sell themselves.

A buyable offer has three layers:

✅ Desired - your buyer can easily understand the value 
✅ Different - your buyer can easily see how you compare to others 
✅ Decisive - your buyer can easily say yes and move forward

I work with you to nail all three. 

We package your services into a clear offer, write copy that sells it, then design a buyer journey that removes friction.

I call this Buyability, and it’s how you sell without selling.

One client 4x'd their pricing after working together. 
Another got 15 inbound leads in just 6 weeks—no hard selling required.

Ready to make your offer more buyable?
Learn more at joedaniels.co or DM me to see how we can work together.
– 
Not sure if your offer is buyable yet?
Take my free offer assessment to get your BUYABILITY score. Link below.

Joe Daniels 📦

$1.7M revenue. Zero outbound. Two founders and a writer.

Anthony Pierri and Rob Kaminski built one of the most successful positioning consultancies in B2B SaaS without cold emails, without a sales team, without chasing leads.

How?

Not by getting better at selling. 
But by being easier to buy.

They nailed all three layers of buyability:

Desirable: They found a massive problem (confusing SaaS homepages) and went all in with one clear offer to solve it.

Decidable: They packaged everything. Pricing, timeline, deliverables - all visible before you ever spoke to them. So the buying decision was 90% made before prospects got on a call.

Discoverable: Anthony and Rob showed up on LinkedIn with the consistency of athletes. More content than competitors. Better content than competitors. They became synonymous with B2B positioning and messaging.

The result? Clients came to them. Pre-sold. Ready to buy.

No pitch-slapping. No "just following up." No begging for meetings.

If your pipeline's gone quiet, you probably don't need better sales tactics. You need to be more buyable.

Swipe through to see exactly how FletchPMM did it ↓

Joe Daniels

Offer creation for agencies and consultants (who hate selling as much as I do)

Buyability Example: Fletch PMM

Stop asking for calls. 
Start building trust.

Had a call last week with an agency owner.

Great content. Solid audience.

But getting people to book calls? Painful.

The frustrating bit: Once he got them on the call, they were sold.

The issue wasn't his offer. It was the ask.

Here's what's happening: 

You're asking prospects to jump from 20% trust to 100% trust in one click.

That's too big a leap.

Think of trust like a meter. Every interaction either fills it or leaves it flat.

Your content gets them to 20-30%. You've shown you understand their problem.

A lead magnet might get them to 40-50%. Now you're giving them something useful.

A diagnostic tool or quiz? That's 70-80%. You're demonstrating expertise and giving them personalised insight.

But a sales call? That requires 90%+ trust. 

They're committing time, revealing their situation, potentially saying yes to spending money.

You're asking them to book before the meter's even half full.

The call shouldn't be the second step. It should be the last step.

We remapped the buyer journey: 
Content -> Diagnostic quiz -> Call

The quiz does the heavy lifting. It gives value, builds credibility, qualifies them, and gets them to 80-90% trust.

By the time they book the call, they're there for the last 10% of the buying journey. Not the first 90%.

Because calls are for closing the gap, not creating the relationship.

If your audience won't book calls, it's likely because you're not building enough trust before asking.

What's your Trust-o-meter strategy? 
Content straight to call, or something in between?

I help agencies sell more without selling harder by making them easy to buy.

Four metrics I now track with every client.

None of them are what you'd expect.

Most agencies measure pipeline value, lead volume, close rate. Those tell you how hard you're working. They don't tell you how easy you are to buy.

These do:

1. Call-to-close time

Not your whole sales cycle - just first conversation to signed deal. If it's dragging, buyers are getting stuck somewhere. Either they don't fully get what you do, or they can't figure out how to say yes.

2. Buyer/seller ratio

Count the touchpoints in a typical deal. How many are them reaching out versus you chasing? If you're initiating most of the contact, you're pushing a boulder uphill. Buyable businesses get pulled.

3. Objections per call

Literally tally them. Not to "handle" them better - to see how many your marketing and positioning failed to resolve before the call. Fewer objections means your website did its job. More means you're selling from scratch every time.

4. Pre-call confidence score

Add one question to your booking form: "How confident are you that we're the right fit?" Sounds weird. But if most people answer 2/5, your content isn't pre-selling. If they're arriving at 4 or 5, you're already most of the way there.

None of these show up in a CRM dashboard.

But they'll tell you more about your buyability than pipeline value ever will.

Which would be most revealing for your business?

Most agencies solve the wrong problem.

Not because they're bad at what they do, but because they picked a problem nobody's desperate to fix.

After working with dozens of agencies on their offer, I've noticed the same pattern. They're solving real problems, sure. But not problems people will throw money at to remove.

If you want people to actually buy, the problem you solve needs to pass three tests...

Urgent:

The problem needs solving now, not "someday." Without urgency, there's no trigger to act. Your proposal sits in their inbox gathering dust while they deal with fires that actually feel pressing.

Specific:

The problem is localised to one particular area. Vague problems feel too big and abstract to solve. If they can't point to exactly where it hurts, they won't buy a fix for it.

Painful:

It's actually harming the business right now. Not a mild annoyance. Not a "nice to have" improvement. Real damage they can feel in their revenue, their time, or their sanity.

Hit all three and you've got a problem people will pay to make disappear.

Miss one? You'll keep hearing "let me think about it" while they quietly ghost you.

Which of the three does your current offer's problem score weakest on?

"People buy based on emotion and then justify it after."

I've never believed in this myth surrounding B2B purchases. 

I've never made an emotional purchase decision for anything to do with work, and I've mostly worked for myself.

So imagine when you're at a bigger company and your repuation's on the line. Your job's on the line, even.

This post from Tas Bober is brilliant not just because she's giving away an insanely valuable process but because of the other implication:

People DO MAKE RATIONAL DECISIONS when making a B2B purchase.

All that emotional stuff is often just said to make businesses feel better for not having a rational reason to be chosen and bought.

Rant over.

Paid ads landing pages for B2B SaaS | 400+ websites, 3x B2B Digital Marketing leader | Co-host of Notorious B2B 🎙️

Here's a process that helped me pick the RIGHT paid media agency when I was in-house. 

CONTEXT: 

1) I saw a few posts floating around in the Exit Five community about agencies - pricing, how to pick the right ones, etc. 

2) Before I became the purple landing page troll on LinkedIn, I spent 15 years in-house, either part of or leading Digital and Website teams at B2B companies.

Managing agencies was a large part of my job. 

And yes, I have been burned by many. Like more than some of my past relationships, burned. 

So I came up with a process to evaluate them because my job, goals, and budget were on the line. 

This was pre-AI so we’re going OLD SCHOOL, PEOPLE. 

THE PROCESS: 

1. A Soft RFP doc (external) 

You need to set SPECIFIC expectations so you don’t waste everyone’s time. 

What are you looking for? 
What metrics are you holding them to? 
What do you expect to see in a proposal (so you aren’t spending 70 minutes on a 70-slide deck that says nothing) 
And yes, what’s your budget range? Many agencies will self-qualify based on that. Everyone wins. 

2. A scoring doc (internal) 

Once you get a few to evaluate, you can score them based on the requirements in the soft RFP. That way you aren’t making emotional decisions or just guessing which one is best. 

---

Using this process, I found my fave paid partner and worked with him at 2 companies while in-house. 

Then blackmailed (I mean, asked very sweetly) for him to work with my clients once I went out on my own.

I'm very reluctant to share him (hashtag onlychild), but will for the right people. 

Either way, here are the templates of the docs I used with a Loom explanation. 

Let me know if it helps. 

PS: I am on the treadmill during the Loom, so sorry, not sorry if I'm out of breath. I'm a mom of 2, I have to get the workouts in when I can to maintain the mom bod. 🤣

Your pipeline isn't quiet because the market's tough. 
It's quiet because buyers can't figure out what you do.

When deals stall, most agency owners blame the usual suspects. The algorithm. The economy. Their sales skills. So they post more, pitch harder, chase longer.

But research shows 40-60% of B2B deals don't go to a competitor. 
They end in no decision.

The buyer got stuck. They couldn't figure out what you actually do or what saying yes even looks like.

Your homepage says some mindless vague crap like "We elevate your performance" which could mean literally anything. 

So the buyer does nothing. Not because they chose someone else. Because choosing you felt too hard.

You're not being outsold. 
You're being out-understood.

If you're wondering whether this is you, I've got a free self-assessment to work out your buyability index and see just how buyable your agency is.

Link's in the comments 👇

How buyable is your agency's offer?

Why not find out with a cool new calculator I made?

You just answer a few questions and my AI tool will analyse your responses, look through your website, and then give you a report that shows your buyability score.

You'll get recommendations on how to improve each of the three layers of buyability - desirability, decidability, and discoverability.

I'd love for you to give it a try and give me any feedback - always happy to make improvements!

Here's the link: https://lnkd.in/e3_QxvY4

If a cold outreach bro brags about their reply rate or meetings booked, ask them about their ratio of actual revenue won to potential revenue lost.

Millennials killed agencies too.
(But not for the reason you think.)

Millennials have been blamed for killing everything from chain restaurants to department stores and even napkins. Now we can add agencies to the list. Kinda.

41% of agencies say business is "a struggle right now." Only 10% describe their world as "very healthy."

So what's actually happening? 

Well, maybe it's that 73% of B2B buyers are now millennials. 
And they buy differently.

Traditional agencies still try to build trust the old way: personal relationships, discovery calls, golf outings, long sales cycles. 

Meanwhile, 68% of millennial buyers prefer self-service research over talking to a sales rep, and they complete 70% of the buying process online before ever engaging with a supplier.

Millennials want transparency. Clear pricing. Digital proof. The exact trust-building approach that agencies refuse to provide because they're too busy trying to book another coffee meeting.

The agencies struggling the hardest? The ones clinging to relationship-selling in a transparency-first market.

Millennials didn't kill agencies. Agencies are killing themselves by refusing to adapt to how millennials actually buy.

Your buyers have changed. 
Your sales approach hasn't. 
That's the problem.

What's one way you've seen agencies miss the mark with millennial buyers?

Outreach gets you meetings. 
It doesn't get you buyers.

The cold outreach crowd loves talking about response rates. 
Meetings booked. Conversations started.

But here's what they don't mention: 

81% of B2B buyers have already chosen their preferred vendor before they ever talk to a salesperson.

So if someone's only in that meeting because you cold-messaged them?

They're not a buyer. They're just being polite.

And it gets worse.

61% of buyers actively prefer a rep-free experience. 

87% say independent research is more efficient than talking to salespeople.

They don't want your call. They want to figure it out themselves.

I dabbled in cold outreach years ago. Didn't last long. 

Because I realised something uncomfortable: I hate when people do this to me. 

Every cold DM I ignore, every pitch email I delete - why would I inflict that on someone else?

I've spoken to hundreds of agency owners over the years. Most feel exactly the same way. They hate receiving it. They dread doing it. That friction isn't a skill gap. It's a strategy problem.

Outreach manufactures conversations with people who aren't looking for you.
Buyer enablement attracts people who already are.

If your sales strategy depends on interrupting strangers, you don't have a demand problem, you have a buyability problem.

Be honest: do you actually enjoy cold outreach, or do you just think you're supposed to?

After 5 years of working with agencies, I can tell you the number one reason deals die.

It's not your pitch. It's not your pricing.
It's that you're unbuyable.

Most agencies think they have a sales problem. So they try to fix it by selling harder - more outreach, more follow-ups, better decks.

But the real issue? Buyers can't figure out how to buy from them.

Buyability comes down to three layers:

Desirable — Are you solving a clear problem with a tangible outcome? Or are you just listing services and hoping something resonates?

Decidable — Can buyers see your pricing, understand your scope, and know the next step? Or do they hit a wall and have to "book a call to find out more"?

Discoverable — Are you consistently visible and marketing the problem you solve? Or do you show up sporadically and just talk about yourself?

The more buyable you are across all three layers, the less you need to rely on sales skills to close deals.

The less buyable you are, the more every deal becomes a grind.

So if your pipeline has gone quiet or deals keep stalling, don't assume you need to get better at selling.

Ask yourself: am I actually easy to buy?

Which layer is your weakest?
—
DM me "audit" if you want me to take a look.

There's an ever-widening gap between how agencies sell and how people want to buy.

And I think it's about time we changed that.

I launched my new newsletter, Be More Buyable, last week.

I touched on why this seller-buyer divide exists and why buyability is the most effective way to plug it.

For those who didn't sub you can read it here:

Open article: The Great Seller-Buyer Divide by bemorebuyable.com

You can't just raise your prices.
You DO have to actually justify it.
Despite what the gurus will tell you.

Amazon sells 350 million products.
Your agency sells 3 services.
Guess which one makes buying easier?

Here's what kills me about agencies: they've convinced themselves they're too bespoke, too custom, too unique to make buying simple.

90% of the agencies I work with hide behind this excuse.

"Our work is too complex to package." 
"Every client is different." 
"We can't just put pricing on our website."

Meanwhile, Amazon has figured out how to let you buy furniture and industrial machinery with two clicks.

You're not too bespoke. You've just never done the work of packaging what you actually do.

Amazon doesn't sell 350 million bespoke experiences. 
They've done the hard work of making complexity buyable.

The work most agencies avoid:

- Deciding what you actually offer (not "custom solutions") 
- Naming it clearly (not "bespoke strategy")
- Showing what it costs (not "it depends") 
- Making the outcome obvious (not "it varies")

Amazon makes buying frictionless.
Agencies make buying friction.

And then they wonder why deals die in endless discovery calls whilst buyers ghost them for competitors who just... make it bloody obvious what they're selling.

You don't need to be less bespoke.
You need to be more buyable.

What's the biggest friction point in buying from your agency?

You're not in their universe. 
And no amount of follow-up will change that.

This graphic from Gartner shows the reality most agency owners ignore...

You're competing with their boss's expectations. Their team's performance. Their actual results.

Most agency owners think they have a pipeline problem.

So they add more touchpoints. 
Refine their pitch. 
Optimize their sequences.

But here's the real issue: 
you're not relevant enough to matter.

Your prospect doesn't care about your services. 
They care about the problem keeping them up at night.

So here's what actually works:

Build an offer focused on a problem they're actively trying to solve - not services you want to sell.

And package it so clearly it becomes the obvious way to solve that problem.

Stop trying to be heard louder. Start being impossible to ignore.

Cold outreach is a symptom, not a strategy.

Your pipeline goes quiet. Panic sets in. And the "cold outreach complex" starts whispering promises of quick wins.

So you start blasting. DMs. Emails. Connection requests. 
Anything to fill the void.

But here's what's actually happening...

If your offer isn't clear and compelling, outreach just amplifies the confusion. You're not generating leads. You're generating ignored messages at scale.

I've lost count of how many agency owners and consultants tell me they've "tried everything" except the one thing that would actually move the needle: fixing their offer.

It's rarely a lead gen problem. 
It's almost always a conversion problem.

Think about it. You could spend 10+ hours this month on cold outreach with an offer nobody understands. Or you could spend that time packaging up an offer people actually want to buy.

One path keeps you busy. 
The other makes you buyable.

Stop selling hard. 
Make buying easy.

So what's your plan this month? 
More wasted outreach or some offer building?

Every 'yes' that built your agency is now strangling it.

Yes to that project outside your wheelhouse because you needed the revenue. Yes to the referral who wanted something adjacent. Yes to the retainer that was "kind of" what you do.

Each yes made sense at the time. It paid the bills, built relationships, expanded what you could offer.

Until it didn't.

I worked with an agency last year who'd started out doing web design. Then a client asked for social media help, so they said yes. Then ads. Then brand strategy.

By the time we spoke, their homepage was a jumbled mess of services. Every proposal was custom because there was no through-line. They needed an hour on a call just to figure out what a prospect actually needed from them.

They hadn't done anything wrong. They'd just said yes too many times.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the services you added to survive are now the reason buyers can't decide.

You're not losing deals to competitors.
You're losing them to confusion.

Scared you're confusing away your prospects?
I'm giving away 3 free Buyability Audits this month. DM me to apply.

Selling is becoming marketing. 
Most people just don't see it yet.

Buyers have changed how they buy.

They show up informed. Sceptical. Already evaluating their options.
They don't want a pitch. They want to guide themselves to a decision.

So what does modern selling actually require?

Self-service buying experiences. Generating demand for problems buyers don't see yet. Educating them on new approaches. Providing all the information upfront. Making the decision easy for people who are already moving towards it.

Wait.

Self-service? Demand generation? Education? Information accessibility?

That's literally what marketing does.

The old model: Marketing brings leads in, sales closes them.

The new reality: Buyers educate themselves. They show up when they're ready to buy. Sales just makes sure they're a good fit.

That's not selling anymore. That's marketing with a qualifier at the end.

Get buyability right and selling becomes indistinguishable from marketing. Both are about the same thing: making it easy for buyers to choose you.

Does your agency still operate like these are separate functions?

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The Battle

Chris Collins

Joe Daniels 📦

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