The first part of the Big Con happens on a train. I’m talking about the movie The Sting, where Paul Newman plays Henry Gondorff, an expert con man, who’s looking to fleece a mob boss named Lonnegan. (Lonnegan killed off one of Henry’s old pals.)
So Henry is now on a train, where Lonnegan regularly runs a poker game. Lonnegan cheats. But Henry cheats better.
Of course, there’s a lot of detailed info necessary to out-cheat a cheat. That’s ok. Henry has got a whole team of tricksters and confidence artists on his payroll. One of them, a guy named J.J. Singleton, comes to give Henry the lowdown right before he goes in to join the poker game:
SINGLETON: “He usually plays with a Royal or a Cadenza. [handing him two sealed decks] I got you one of each. He likes to cold deck low, 8’s or 9’s.”
“That’s nice work, J.J.”
Armed with this info, Henry goes into the poker game. He slaps some gin on his face, acts the fool, and cleans up the table. Lonnegan is furious — and hooked for the rest of the Big Con.
Several times, I’ve written sales emails that started out just like this post. In other words, they referenced a movie, and then tied it into what I was promoting.
Once, this was the X-Men — I talked about Professor X’s ability to read minds, and said how this would help guys who want to please their women better (this was for a “rekindle your romance” course). Another time, I started off talking about the Shawshank Redemption, and then tied this into an ebook on treatments for chronic kidney disease.
The thing is, in both those emails, I was stuck at first. I knew the movie tied into what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to make the link. I made several false starts that were weak or rambled on for too long. The answer in both cases was to pick a specific scene, and lead off with that. And that’s the marketing lesson I want to crystalize in this post:
When it’s hard to figure out what to write, the answer is almost always to look for more info. Sometimes, that means going out and doing more research. Other times, it simply means focusing more on the details that are already at my disposal — like picking a specific scene from a movie.