convert-four-questions

# Convert Four Questions - The Donahoe Diagnostic

> *"Before you write a single word of copy, you need to answer four questions - from the customer's perspective. Not your perspective. Theirs."* - The Donahoe Method

Four Questions. Four answers. Each in one sentence. From the customer's chair, not yours.

This is the diagnostic that runs **before** any other Method skill. Skip it and the rest of the Method has nothing to write against.

## When to Use

Trigger phrases: "run the four questions", "four questions", "donahoe diagnostic", "why you why me why this why now", "brief me on the customer", "what should this copy do", `/convert four-questions <product>`.

Run this skill **first** - before `convert-open`, before `convert-bullets`, before any page-builder. The Four Questions output becomes the brief the rest of the Method writes against.

Do NOT use for:
- Scoring an existing page (use `convert-audit` for Method-scored teardown)
- Direct copy generation (this produces a *brief*, not a draft)
- Offer design itself (use `funnels-offer` - different pack)
- Awareness-level classification alone (use `convert-temperature` - paired but distinct)

## Inputs

Required:
1. **Product / offer** - what's being sold? One concrete description. Not "a course on marketing" - *"an 8-week program that teaches plumbers how to run their own Google Local Service Ads, $1,997, includes done-with-you setup."*
2. **Reader** - one specific person (the One Person Rule). Not "small business owners" - *"Mike, runs a 3-truck plumbing crew in Akron, has tried two SEO agencies and one Facebook ads guy in the last 18 months, none of it produced calls he could measure."*
3. **Author / seller** - who's the "I" telling them this? Their qualification needs to be Skin-In-The-Game qualification, not credential dump.

Optional:
- **Asset type** - sales page / VSL / email / ad. Tunes how aggressively each answer needs to land.
- **Existing brand voice notes** - vocabulary, signature phrases.
- `out_path` - caller-controlled output path. Defaults via `build_report_path`.

## The Four Questions (full method)

### 1. Why You?

Why should THIS person care? Not "why is this important" in the abstract - why does it matter to THEM, right now, today? What's it costing them to NOT have this? What's the specific pain, frustration, or missed opportunity that makes this relevant to their Tuesday?

**Test:** if you can't answer in one sentence that would make Mike nod and say *"yeah, that's exactly my problem"* - you haven't done enough research.

Specifications:
- One sentence
- Names the specific cost of inaction (money / time / opportunity / sanity)
- Tied to *their* current week, not a hypothetical pain
- Specific enough that the wrong reader self-deselects

Examples:
- ✓ *"Every week you don't have a system for landing inbound plumbing calls, you're losing roughly $4,800 in jobs to whoever's running ads against your zip code."*
- ✗ *"Marketing is important for growing your business."* (abstract, generic, zero nerve)
- ✗ *"You should care about leads."* (a directive, not a diagnosis)

### 2. Why Me?

Why should they listen to YOU? Not your resume. Not your certifications. Why are you specifically qualified to help THEM with THIS problem?

The answer is almost always: *"Because I've been where you are, I figured it out, and I have the results to prove it."*

This isn't about being the most credentialed person in the room. It's about being the most credible. Credibility comes from experience, specificity, and the ability to describe their situation so accurately that they feel like you're reading their mind.

Specifications:
- One sentence
- First-person, specific past situation that mirrors theirs
- Concrete result attached (numbers, dates, before/after)
- No credential dump - credentials drop in passing if they appear at all

Examples:
- ✓ *"I ran a service business for nine years before I figured out the Local Services Ads angle that took my own crew from $11k months to $38k months in under a year - and now I show other operators how to do it without the $80k of mistakes I made first."*
- ✗ *"As a leading expert in digital marketing for service businesses..."* (credential-dump opener - fails Skin-In-The-Game)
- ✗ *"I've helped many businesses grow."* (vague, no proof, no shared experience)

### 3. Why This?

Why this specific solution and not the hundred other options they've already seen? What makes this approach fundamentally different? Not "better" - different. What's the mechanism that makes this work when other things haven't?

This is the hardest question to answer, and most copy fails here. *"It's better"* isn't an answer. *"It works differently because [specific mechanism]"* is.

Specifications:
- One sentence
- Names the *mechanism*, not the benefit
- Differentiates from at least one named alternative the reader has tried
- Specific enough that you couldn't swap it onto a competitor's page

Examples:
- ✓ *"Unlike Facebook ads - which front-load you with $3,000 of testing before any phone rings - Google Local Service Ads charge you only when a verified-intent caller lands on your line, which is why our students see real bookings inside week one instead of week ten."*
- ✗ *"Our system is better than the others."* (no mechanism, no differentiation)
- ✗ *"We use a proprietary AI-powered framework."* (buzzword salad - fails the Bullshit Filter)

### 4. Why Now?

Why should they act today instead of bookmarking this and forgetting about it? The answer must be REAL. If there's no genuine reason to act now, don't manufacture one. Fake urgency kills the trust you've built.

But if there IS a real reason - limited capacity, a price change, a bonus that's going away, a market window that's closing - state it plainly.

Specifications:
- One sentence
- Real reason - verifiable, not invented
- If no real urgency exists, the answer is: "the cost of *not* doing it keeps compounding" - and the copy reflects that honestly
- No fake countdo