Normally, I’ll block off 2 weeks for writing a sales letter. This is so I’ve got enough time for research, thinking through a few different approaches and have a gap of a couple of days at the end where I can put the letter in a drawer, forget about it, and then come back fresh for a final edit.

But sometimes, I don’t have that luxury.

On Sunday I was approached for an 11th-hour job – the launch was happening on Wednesday and they still needed copy.

This isn’t the kind of thing I’ll normally do, but the guy was a mate and had very good reasons why his copy wasn’t done, so I wasn’t about to let him hang out to dry.

At 11AM on Monday, I had a blank sheet of paper. At 5PM, I had a sales letter.

Now, it’s not my best work. But it will convert.

And there was some help – he sent a script for a video, copies of all the products and some bullets that had been used on previous letters. The bullets in particular helped shave off a couple of hours of writing-time.

But the main reason I managed to get a good job done fast was because I’ve got templates. I already knew the meta-argument I was going to use, I just had to work out how to fit it into this product’s story. The structure was already done.

You should never be afraid of using templates. There’s a reason a lot of sales letters have a similar structure – because it works. When it comes to sales copy, we’re in the business of writing – not the business of being creative.