WW2 Winning Wisdom

I came across this original quote from replies to an eye-catching tweet showing an all but blank page from a book by Steven Pressfield called Turning Pro; 'the amateur tweets, the pro works'.

I further gather there are variations; substituting such as talk for study or strategy for tactics. So I chose to make a Sales one of our own.

Broadly this is a staple slide template. Show a quote, then amend it. In full view. To wrap around your point.

You can be provocative. Ground your argument. Highlight a pitch aspect. Generate debate.

Especially when using the words of someone prospect-side (with care).

I used to call this treatment 'quotejacking'. In a nod to a newsjack. It goes under labels like adapted, amended and repurposed quote. I've also seen it referred to as a strikethrough remix.

Caution not to overuse the technique in a deck. Nor use a sacred utterance or divisive source. Try limit mods to a minimum. Keeping the rhythm in tact. Also maybe signal with the likes of, from my example here, 'with apologies to General Bradley' or, 'updating the famed WW2 wisdom'. And lastly, make the visual changes clear and instant.

Indeed, here's an AI feedback; "This technique is powerful because it borrows the authority and memorability of the original while giving you full control of the message. When done cleanly (as in your image), it feels clever rather than derivative."

For those of a lexical bent, this can often be close to what's known as a snowclone.

Which is where you take a well known quote, cliche or aphorism and adapt it to your means.

The term was coined by a boffin from the blueprint, 'if Eskimos have N words for snow, then X must have Y words for Z'. Perhaps the most used versions are refashioning the cultural shift, 'X is the new Y' and the shorthand for inevitability, 'the Xers gonna X'.

So you have yourself a flexible framework. File alongside another classic, the fill-in-the-blank. I learn this audience engagement prompt also has other names. Chiefly (& new to me) as a Cloze test. So for my sample;

"Amateurs talk ________; professionals study ________."

It seems the name comes from the Gestalt psychology concept of closure (the mind’s tendency to complete incomplete patterns).

As for my actual message here, I too could have swapped in 'strategy' for 'tactics'. I went for an obvious red herring. It really doesn't matter what you sub in, that which underpins all sustainable, repeatable solution sell success is process. Every time the top sellers are the ones that know why they succeed, and are constantly refining how they do so.