Fire Your Big Guns First: How to Win 75% of Any Decision in the First Few Words
Jun 02, 2026Let me give you the most valuable idea in this whole article right now, in the very first line.
Around 75% of any decision someone makes about you, your idea, or your offer is made before you have finished getting to your point.
Read that again, because it changes everything.
If that is true, and I have found over more than thirty years that it is, then the way you and I open every email, every video, every web page, and every conversation matters more than almost anything else we do.
So I have put the big idea at the top, where you can see it, rather than burying it three pages down where most people would never reach it.
That, in a single move, is the whole lesson. Now let me show you where it comes from and how to use it.
What You Will Take Away From This Article
Every Communication Is an Attempt to Persuade
The 75% Rule I Learned From Ted Nicholas
How to Apply This in Your Own Work
The One Question to Ask Yourself Every Time
Every Communication Is an Attempt to Persuade
Before we go any further, I want to leave you with one fundamental truth about communication. Once you truly understand it, it changes how you approach every single interaction.
“All communication is an attempt to persuade someone else to do or avoid doing something, either now or in the future.”
Let me say it again, because it is worth sitting with.
Every communication is an attempt to persuade someone else to do or avoid doing something, now or in the future.
Think about that for a moment.
Whether you are giving a sales pitch, drafting an email, speaking to a friend, recording a video, or posting on social media, you are always trying to persuade. You are trying to get someone to think, feel, and act differently.
If we accept that this is what all communication actually is, then a simple truth follows.
We need to engage people quickly, so they then buy our idea or buy into our idea.
If you are talking about a product or a service, you want them to buy it. If you are sharing an idea, you want them to buy into it. Either way, the clock is ticking from the first word. I explore this in much more depth in my work on persuasion.
The 75% Rule I Learned From Ted Nicholas
My first big learning on this came from Ted Nicholas.
Ted became a friend of mine, and in my opinion he was probably the best marketeer who ever lived.
He said something to me that I have never forgotten.
“75% of the buying decision is made at the headline.”
Now, I want to add a word to what Ted said. Not to change his meaning, but to widen it for the work that you and I do.
75% of the buying, and the buying into, decision is made at the headline.
Here is what I mean by that.
When you and I are communicating with someone, the very first thing we say is doing most of the heavy lifting.
It is selecting the right person. It is telling them this is for them. And it is deciding, in a few short seconds, whether they lean in or quietly move on.
Remember this: the headline is not the thing you bolt on at the end. It is the thing that decides whether anything else you have written or said will ever be read or heard at all.
This is why a strong first line, first slide, or first sentence is worth more of your time than almost any other part of your message.
Get it right, and people are 70% to 75% of the way to buying your idea, or buying into it, before you have made your case.
Get it wrong, and the best argument in the world never gets a hearing.
Fire Your Big Guns First
My second big learning came from a fantastic book called Sales Letters That Sizzle by Herschell Gordon Lewis.
I read it years and years ago, and I took many lessons from it. But the major message I took was this.
“Fire your big guns first.”
In other words, put the major part of your message up front.
This is how we engage people far better than we may have done in the past.
In journalism there is a phrase for getting this wrong. It is called burying the lead.
Burying the lead means hiding your most important, most interesting, most compelling point somewhere down the page, where the reader has to dig for it.
Most readers will not dig. They are busy. They have far too much to read already. They will skim, and if nothing grabs them in the first few words, they are gone.
So the answer is simple to say, even if it takes discipline to do.
Bring your big gun up front and central. Do not leave it on page four of the web page, or page three of the email.
The principle in one line: say the most important thing first, then support it. Never make people wait for the good part.
How to Apply This in Your Own Work
So how do you and I actually use this idea? Let me show you across the three ways we communicate most.
In your written communication
Look at the next email or web page you write.
Ask yourself a hard question. Is my most important point in the first sentence, or have I warmed up to it over three paragraphs first?
If it is buried, move it. Put the benefit, the result, or the most interesting promise right at the top.
- Open with the single most valuable thing the reader will get.
- Make the first line so engaging that the second line becomes irresistible.
- Cut the throat-clearing. The phrases that just take up space before you say anything real.
In your video communication
The same rule applies, and arguably it matters even more.
People decide within seconds whether to keep watching.
So do not spend the first thirty seconds on your name, your background, and a slow build-up.
Open with the idea. Lead with the value. Earn the rest of the watch time by giving away something worth staying for in the first breath.
In your face-to-face communication
When you are with a prospective client, your opening words set the tone for everything that follows.
Lead with what matters to them, not with a long preamble about you.
When you position yourself well at the start of a conversation, the whole relationship changes. That is exactly the kind of thinking I share inside The Paid Up Club, where we work through this together.
The One Question to Ask Yourself Every Time
Here is what I do, and what I would love you to do too.
I take myself forward in the moment, and I ask myself this.
“Peter, when I am communicating, am I making certain I am engaging people very quickly?”
Am I firing my big gun first?
Am I making that headline, that first thing I say, so engaging that people are 70% buying it, or 70% buying into it, before I have said anything else?
It is a simple check. But it is the difference between a message that lands and a message that is politely ignored.
Your check, every time: before you press send, post, or speak, ask whether your big gun is firing first. If it is not, move it to the front.
Bringing It All Together
So let us pull the threads together.
Every communication is an attempt to persuade someone to do or avoid doing something, now or in the future.
Around 75% of that decision is made at the headline, the first thing you say.
And the way to win that 75% is to fire your big guns first, rather than bury the lead.
You can take this away and use it in everything you do, in your business and in your life.
The next email. The next video. The next conversation. The next post.
Lead with the thing that matters most, and watch how much more engaged people become.
I wish you every success as you apply this idea, and in all your adventures in life.
If You Want to Go Further With This
If this idea resonates with you, and you want to get richly rewarded for the value you deliver, there are two simple next steps you and I can take together.
Download a FREE copy of my book Persuasion: Master the Art of Influence in Any Conversation.
Get your copy of PAID! at peterthomson.com/paid.
Join The Paid Up Club. This is where coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers, and accountants come to apply ideas like this one, together, so they reach more of the right people and charge the right fees for the value they create.
Come and join us inside The Paid Up Club.
Peter Thomson
'The UK's Most Prolific Business Development Author'
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