Great Leads: The Six Easiest Ways to Start Any Sales Message

we want to draw your attention here to that last part of the formula, the “reason why,” because it’s the element many copywriters overlook.

a great idea is: Big (enough to stir interest) Easy to understand Immediately convincing Clearly useful (to the reader)

concept of “customer awareness.” And, we’re not the first. It was the late, great copywriting legend Gene Schwartz who first wrote about this idea, in his classic book Breakthrough Advertising.

Instead of aiming at consumers’ logical decision-making processes, companies could perhaps appeal to the fuzzier side of how people feel about themselves and others around them.”

The less your customer knows about you, what you’re selling, or his own needs, the less effective a direct lead is likely to be.

I was trained for this job by a master. His name was Harry. He had been selling products door-to-door for thirty of his forty-five years at the time. I was working part-time, as I was in my senior year of college. Harry didn’t think much of formal education. “Why do you want to waste your time reading a bunch of dusty old books?” he’d ask me. “Ever

When you’re working with a less aware or skeptical customer, the great power of an indirect lead is it can open — or re-open — the door on that relationship before the customer has the chance to get confused or sock your offer away in a pigeon-hole of “heard that, done that before.”

You might accidentally use an indirect lead when you don’t need to. You might pick a lead that’s too indirect to connect back to your product. You risk being too subtle by taking your time to get to the product. You risk boring your customer by taking too long to get to the product. You risk getting distracted by writing something “interesting” but

Socially, this insight comes naturally. What you might not realize, though, is that in marketing — and especially in crafting powerful leads for sales letters — the same instinct can apply.