The Empty Suitcase: How to Create Curiosity Before You Reveal the Value

There is a device I have been using for nearly forty years without ever knowing it had a name.

I found the name recently, and honestly, the name is useless.

The picture, though, is unforgettable.

It is the empty suitcase, and by the time you finish reading this you will be using it in your subject lines, your headlines, your body copy, your webinar openings and your report titles.

Let me hand it to you.

        1. What the Empty Suitcase Actually Is

Imagine I walk up to you and hand you a suitcase.

I say nothing about what is inside it.

You take it, and the first thing you do is give it a shake.

Then you tilt it, and you listen, and within about two seconds you want to open it.

That is the whole technique.

You point at something before you name it, and the pointing creates a small, insistent itch in the reader's mind.

The proper term for it is cataphora, which is a forward reference.

I have been playing with that word for weeks and I still trip over it, so let us agree to forget it.

Your audience will remember the suitcase long after they have forgotten the strange Greek word, and that is rather the point.

        2. Why an Empty Case Is More Interesting Than a Full One

Here is the bit that most people miss.

If I hand you a case and tell you exactly what is inside it, the tension collapses instantly.

You have the information, so you no longer need me.

But if I hand it to you and say nothing, your brain does the work for me.

Robert Collier put it beautifully when he said we should always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer's mind.

The empty suitcase does something slightly different and slightly cheekier.

It starts a new conversation and then refuses to finish it.

Joseph Sugarman said the sole purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence.

A forward reference is about the most reliable way I know of making that happen, because the second sentence is where the answer lives.

        3. The Four Movements: Curiosity, Anticipation, Delay, Payoff

The process is simple enough to write on the back of a card, and I would rather like you to do exactly that.

One. You introduce the unknown, which means you refer to a thing without naming it.

Two. You spark curiosity, which happens automatically the moment the reference lands.

Three. You build anticipation with a short delay, and I do mean short.

Four. You deliver the payoff cleanly, and you deliver it in full.

One promise, one short delay, one clean reveal.

Miss the fourth movement and you have not written a hook, you have written a tease, and there is a world of difference between the two.

        4. Pointing Forwards Versus Pointing Backwards

Let me show you both, side by side, because the contrast makes the whole thing obvious.

Pointing backwards sounds like this.

"Peter wrote another book and it became a bestseller."

The word "it" refers to something you have already been given, so there is no mystery and no pull.

Pointing forwards sounds like this.

"It was an extraordinary achievement. Peter's fifteenth book."

Same information, different order, completely different effect on the reader.

Try it with a person rather than a thing.

"When he finally walked on stage, Winston Churchill received a standing ovation."

The pronoun arrives before the person, and for a fraction of a second you are asking yourself who "he" is.

That fraction of a second is engagement, and engagement is everything.

Every sentence has to earn its keep, rather like a packet of cereal on a supermarket shelf.

        5. Twelve Empty Suitcases You Can Use This Week

These are the patterns I keep on cards in my desk drawer, built up over decades of reading and testing.

Take them, fill in the blanks with your own world, and start measuring the difference.

• This is the one mistake costing [your audience] thousands, every single day.
• I am going to share something today that completely changed the way I think about price.
• I will tell you the most profitable question you can ask a client, but first, let me explain how you set it up.
• This single idea transformed my business.
• Here is what nobody tells you about raising your fees.
• The one action that doubled our response rate was not the one we expected.
• There is one lesson my father taught me that I have never forgotten.
• This is the expensive oversight that puts solo directors on a path to an uncomfortable retirement.
• There is a reason enquiries go quiet after the first call, and most consultants have never put a name to it.
• There is one thing every successful consultant does.
• The secret to success is simpler than you think. Consistency.
• If you want to be richly rewarded doing what you do, remember this. People pay for value, not for time.

Read that last one again, because it is doing two jobs at once.

It hands you a suitcase with the word "this", and then it opens the case with a line worth remembering.

You could open a webinar with it, use it as a subhead in a sales letter, or drop it into the middle of a proposal.

        6. The Word "This" Does Most of the Work

Here is a small hinge that swings an enormous door.

Compare these two lines.

"There is one mistake costing dentists thousands every single day."

"This is the one mistake costing dentists thousands, every single day."

The second one is magnetic, and the reason is that "this" points at something specific.

"There is" merely announces that a thing exists somewhere in the world, which is far less interesting.

Think back to one of the four legendary adverts we study.

It was not "Do you make mistakes in English?"

It was "Do you make these mistakes in English?", and that one word ran for decades.

While you are in there tightening things, take out the word "that" wherever you can.

"This is the one mistake that is costing dentists thousands" becomes "This is the one mistake costing dentists thousands", and it reads better, faster and with more oomph.

        7. The Serious Question Set-Up

Rachel and I have used this one for more years than I care to count, and it works every time.

When you are booking an appointment with somebody, you say this.

"May I ask you a serious question?"

Pause.

They say yes, because nobody ever says no to that.

"If for any reason you are not able to make that meeting, will you let me know?"

Notice what the set-up line has done.

It has handed them an empty suitcase labelled "serious", and by the time they open it they have already agreed to take it seriously.

Here is another set-up line you can lift straight into a webinar opening.

"I would like to give you one lead generation idea this morning. It will not take long to explain, but when you put it into practice, it could be worth tens of thousands of pounds to your business."

Read that again and notice the word "when" rather than "if".

"If" invites doubt, "when" assumes action, and that single letter change is worth having.

        8. The Joel Barker Move

Years ago I was watching Joel Barker, the man who did so much of the original work on paradigms, and he did something so good I had to rewind the tape.

He posed a question to the audience.

Then he paused.

Then he said, quite calmly, "I know the answer to that question."

I actually stopped the video and played it again, because I wanted to work out what had just happened to me.

What had happened is that he had re-hooked me halfway through his own presentation.

He had also positioned himself as the person who holds the answer, which is authority without a single boastful word.

I use it constantly now, on webinars, in client conversations, in writing.

Pose the question, pause, say you know the answer, then tell the story of how you found out.

This matters because a hook is not a one-off event at the top of the page.

        9. How Long Should You Hold the Case Shut?

Not long, and this is where a great many people get it wrong.

I sit through webinars where the tease goes on and on, and by minute fourteen I have folded my arms.

By minute twenty I am saying, out loud, "for heaven's sake, get on with it."

Curiosity has a shelf life, and once it expires it turns into irritation.

A delay of a few seconds in speech, or a sentence or two in writing, is usually plenty.

There is a difference, too, between a video and a letter.

People rarely skip ahead in a video, they simply click away, so your delays need to be even shorter.

Readers, on the other hand, skim, and they stop on subheads, which is why every subhead deserves a suitcase of its own.

        10. Your Practice for This Week

Here is what I would like you and I to do, and it will take you twenty minutes.

Open the last piece of copy you wrote, whether that was an email, a landing page or a LinkedIn post.

Find the first line and ask whether it names the thing or points at it.

If it names it, rewrite it so it points instead.

Then go to each subhead and do exactly the same thing.

Then find every "there is" and try "this is" in its place.

Send it, and then, and this is the part almost everybody skips, measure what happens.

People who keep records break records, and people who do not keep records have no idea whether anything they did made a difference.

Guess and measure, and you will get better at guessing.

Hand them the suitcase. Then open it. One promise, one short delay, one clean reveal.

Where to Take This Next

Everything in my working life comes back to persuasion.

Somebody once said to me that all communication is an attempt to persuade someone else, or ourselves, to do or avoid doing something either now or in the future.

I have been looking for an exception to that for years and I have not found one yet.

If that idea sits well with you, I have put the whole of my thinking on it into a book, and you can have a copy without paying me a penny.

Little hinges swing big doors, and this is one of the smallest hinges I know.

Go and swing a door.

Peter

Peter Thomson

'The UK's Most Prolific Business Development Author'