What I Learned from Billy Mays

With the recent passing of ubiquitous TV pitchman Billy Mays, I got to thinking a little about how much I actually enjoy informercials and those “But wait, there’s more” TV ads that have been on the air for years.  Mays and a lot of his peers got their start working country fairs and trade shows, demonstrating products in front of passing crowds, and needed to learn ways to quickly get their audiences attention and hold it.  Once they attracted an audience, they needed to turn those passersby into paying customers.  While you might not be in the business of selling household gadgets, I think there’s a lot that a pitchman like Mays can teach anyone who’s in sales, particularly those of us who do product demos for prospective clients.

Now, I’m not a professional sales person, let me get that out of the way right up front.  However, I do conduct software product demos in sales situations on a regular basis, and quickly came to the realization that it’s not as easy as just trotting the product out and putting it through its paces.  Pitchmen like Billy Mays have a very specific approach to selling and demoing, whether it’s for a kitchen gadget, or a miracle cleaner, and that approach might help you improve your next product demo as well.  So here, in no particular order, are 4 things I learned from Billy Mays and his peers…

Get to the Point! A typical TV spot is 60-90 seconds, and most people use a commercial break to get a refill on their drink, take a bathroom break, or (perish the thought!) have a conversation with the other people in the room.  As a result, a TV commercial needs to get to the point fast, and capture the audience before they get busy doing something else.  You need to do the same thing in your product demo.  Just because you’ve got 30 minutes allocated in your meeting agenda for a product demo does NOT mean you should spend the first 15 minutes talking about the history of your product, or about your own resume.  Your audience will start counting ceiling tiles after about two minutes if you bore them, and I don’t care how interesting a speaker you are – they’re here to see a demo of your amazing product, not to hear you TALK about it.  So show them something, PRONTO!

What’s in it for ME? The next time one of those gadget commercials is on, pay attention to how it begins.  Almost invariably, the very first thing the pitchman does is ask the audience if they suffer with some kind of problem, be it torn clothing, the challenge of making dinner, or hard water stains on the shower.   And guess what?  The pitchman has got the solution, and here it is!  If you’re sitting in front of your TV and you’ve got a shower covered in soap scum, you’re probably going to at least pay some attention to the rest of this commercial, even if you think that it’s all a load of hooey.  You need to start your product demo the same way – by identifying your product with some challenge or problem that your audience needs to solve.  Then it’s time to wow them by showing them how your product helps them solve the problem.

Practice, Practice, Practice! Let’s face it – it’s a good bet that most of the kitchen gadgets we see on TV commercials aren’t quite as easy to use as they seem on TV.  And even if they are, you’re probably not going to take the thing out of the box when it arrives, and make it do what the pitchman did on TV the very first time you use it.  The truth is, even the pros make mistakes. But when you’ve only got 60 seconds (or 10 minutes) to convince your audience of the merits of your product, you need to make damn sure that you don’t fumble, or stumble, or click the wrong button and derail your entire demo.  Remember, those ceiling tiles are just calling out for your audience to start counting them.  Don’t give them the opportunity to lose interest – make sure you know EXACTLY how your product works, and make sure you have your entire demo down pat long before you step into the room with your prospective audience.

Be Memorable!! Part of the fun for me in watching a Billy Mays commercial is Billy himself.  He was loud, he moved his hands a lot, and he seemed to bring real passion for whatever product he was hawking, whether it was a laundry detergent or a kitchen gadget.  Now, I’m not proposing that you stand in front of your customers and yell like Billy Mays, but don’t be afraid to put some oompf into your delivery.  I firmly believe it’s better to be a little like Billy Mays, then to be like Ben Stein.  And part of the experience is the message.  You don’t have to include hokey sales rhymes or catch phrases (but wait, there’s still more!), but make sure you get your key messages across with a few memorable lines, and make sure that there’s at least one thing in your demo that you KNOW your audience is going to remember a month from now.

Over 20 years ago, there was a commercial on the air here in Boston featuring a Saladmaster salesman named Chris Nahatis, who I believe still sells for them.  I can’t locate the commercial on YouTube, but at one point in the commercial, Nahatis demonstrated the durability of the Saladmaster skillet he was pitching by banging the skillet against an inferior skillet repeatedly until the cheap skillet dented and nearly folded in half.  He then held the Saladmaster skillet, still in excellent shape, up to the camera, exclaiming “Look at this for abuse!”.  I wasn’t in the market for kitchenware 20 years ago, but that ad held my attention everytime it was on, and I still remember it like it was yesterday.  That’s the kind of product demo I want to give everytime I stand up in front of a prospective client, and I wish the same for everyone out there who gives demos.

The Challenge of Choice

There’s been a lot written about the so-called “paradox of choice”; that is, the idea that the more choices a consumer has, the less likely he or she may be to actually make a purchase.  A trip down the aisles of any grocery store highlights the fact that here in the US, we are blessed (cursed?) with an astonishing array of choice for even the most mundane items.  During my weekly excursion to the store yesterday, I found myself getting a little frustrated because the store had apparently not had time to restock a lot of the shelves, and a number of items that I usually buy were simply not there.  But, when I took a minute to reflect, as I waited for a shopping cart traffic jam to clear, I realized that we have it pretty darn good.  I mean, when you are getting upset because you can’t find the particular size box of a particular flavor of a particular brand of a certain type of breakfast cereal, you really have to step back and get a grip.

 But I realized something else during the weekly shopping trip.  I’m kind of a task-oriented person, and I typically can’t get out of the store fast enough.  I’ve got the store pretty much memorized, and I try to minimize the time I spend in the store, just focused on checking items off the list.  But there are a lot of people who take the time to browse the selection…choosing between the 10 different types and brands of canned peaches, or the mountain of pasta varieties.  Maybe they shop that way because they are overwhelmed by the choice, maybe they have nothing better to do, or maybe they just enjoy the act of browsing, and looking for something new and different.

And that’s where I think online grocery shopping sites fall down – that serendipitous moment when you discover something totally unexpected.  I once thought I was the perfect candidate for online grocery shopping, because for the most part, I buy the same stuff every week.  Once I established my list, I’d be able to save it on a service like Peapod, and then I’d only have to spent a few minutes every week placing my order, saving nearly 90 minutes a week.  And, for a few weeks, I used the service religiously.  But there were two things that I didn’t like about the experience. 

First, there was the issue of substitutions.  Anytime the store was out of the particular size/flavor/brand of an item, someone at the warehouse would choose a substitute, and many times, the substitute wasn’t really what we wanted.

Second, there was no serendipity.  Once a shopping list was established, it became so easy to just place an order every week with a few clicks, and the same items would arrive, week after week. But while that was very “efficient”, it also meant that we got the same thing, week after week.  Because I wasn’t walking about the store, I didn’t see the bucket of just-made chocolate chip cookies sitting on the table by the bakery, so no cookies.  There’s something powerful about seeing, or more accurately, smelling the bakery products to lend itself to impulse buys.  For that matter, simply walking down the aisles of a grocery store can lend itself to all kinds of impulse buys, which is why I brought home the Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits last week.  I suppose one could go searching for impulse buys online, but it’s much easier and much more powerful to actually see and feel the products sitting on a shelf. 

So what does that mean for online grocery shopping sites?  Well, if you’re someone who wants the same thing, week after week, or if you can distill your staples list down to a predictable list, online grocery sites can certainly be a time saver.  But to capture someone like me, a site needs to offer up ways for me to stumble across special treats.  Certainly, sites like eBay and Amazon have the ability to track a customer’s purchases, and make inferences about other products that customer might enjoy.  Maybe such an inference engine could drive the site to pop up items randomly for suggestion, but that still wouldn’t match the sensory experience of a bricks and mortar store. 

I think true foodies are always going to prefer the experience of a store where they can see, smell and feel items displayed for them.  And, to be honest, while I don’t think of myself as a foodie, I can’t see myself doing all my grocery shopping online either.   

Reflections on Service

Seth Godin posted a cool piece the other day about the concept of “all inclusive” in business today, and how it can either be a legitimate way to show customers the love, or a half-hearted effort that really isn’t going to help in the long run.  I just happened to read the post while I was at the car dealer, and I realized that I was experiencing a real world example of that very concept at work.

 While I was out of the office over the holidays, one of my to-do’s for the week was to get oil changes and Massachusetts State Inspections done for both of our vehicles.  Over 2 days, I took my car to a local Chevy dealer, and my wife’s van to a local Honda dealer.  The differences between the two experiences were striking, and I think highlighted Seth’s point.

My experience at the Chevy dealer started out by making an appointment to have the work done, due to the fact that it was the end of the month, and I expected a lot of people would be doing the same thing.  I arrived at the dealership on time, and pulled up to the reception bay, where I waited several minutes for someone to open the door.  I pulled inside, shut the car off, and walked to the service desk, where I waited another several minutes for someone to appear.  Eventually someone did, I gave them my information, and was waved to the waiting room down the hall.  The waiting room was about what you’d expect – a small room, a number of barely comfortable chairs, a tv bolted to the wall, and a table with some Chevy brochures.  In the hallway, was a couple of vending machines, and a “quiet room” next to the vending machine featured a couple more chairs, and a couple of desks with phones and power outlets.  I did plug my laptop in to one of the outlets, and discovered that the truck dealer adjoining the Chevy dealer had an open wifi network, so spent most of my time waiting catching up on reading blog posts.  All in all, not a bad experience…just about what I expected from a car dealer.

My visit to the Honda dealer started on a down note.  I didn’t have an appointment, so as I pulled up to the reception bay, I was disappointed to see that not only was the bay full with customer vehicles, but there were at least 8 cars parked outside the bay waiting.  However, a service advisor came out almost immediately to greet me, and let me know how long they expected it was going to take to service my car.  He also gave me a coupon for a free beverage at the dealership cafe (more on that in a minute), and I headed for the waiting room.  The waiting room, which was really integrated into the showroom itself, was a comfortable area with large leather chairs equipped with writing desks, wood paneling, a large flat panel TV on the wall, and several alcoves with computers available for customers.  Down the hall, there was an actual cafe – not vending machines, but a counter staffed with a real person, offering gourmet sandwiches, chips, pastries, coffee and cold drinks.  I sat down in one of the comfy chairs, found a plug and fired up the laptop to take advantage of the wifi that the dealer provides.  When the car was done (about the time the service advisor said it would be), the advisor reminded me that since I bought the car at the dealer, the inspection was free, so I just had to pay for the oil change.  When I got to the car, it had been washed and vacuumed.

 Two dealers, two approaches to service.  It probably bears mentioning that the Chevy dealer is the closest GM dealer to my house, and since I’m not aware of any better dealers, I go there.  However, there is a Honda dealer only 2 miles from my house.  I don’t go there, and drive through 2 towns to get to Honda North, because of the service and the way I’m treated there.  It may have cost them a little extra to build the waiting room, equip it with comfortable chairs and pc’s, build out the cafe and pay someone to staff it.  However, I know that every time I talk to someone who’s looking to buy a Honda, I strongly recommend Honda North to them.  I can’t honestly say that I talk a lot about the Chevy dealer.

Looking ahead to 2008

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone, but such is life.  Although I’ve never been a big believer in resolutions per se, I do try to take a few moments and try to reassess where things are, and where I’d like them to go in the New Year.  The combination of the New Year, and my rapidly approaching birthday (42 this year), make it as good a time as any to figure out where I want to focus for the next year or so.  I’m thinking about general themes and areas to be aware of and focus on, rather than specific targets, so here we go….

Social Interactions

I’ve never been really good at staying in touch with people, or expanding my circle of friends, colleagues, etc.  Part of it is probably due to some innate shyness, but I think it’s mostly due just to my really not bothering to spend a lot of time on socializing.  This year, I need to spend more time staying connected to my existing friends and family, via emails, and more regular phone calls.  I also need to get out and visit family more, including some of my extended family who I really only see at funerals, it seems.  I also need to expand my circle of professional contacts, in the finance, technology and fire service circles.

Health

I’ve made some good strides over the past year in managing my Crohn’s, though better diet, particularly by focusing on ensuring that I drink at least 60 ounces of water a day.  However, I’m still woefully out of shape, something I’m reminded of everytime I go out on a call with the Fire Dept and actually have to do physical work.  Right now, walking a mile and a half each day to the office and back is about all the exercise I get, and that needs to change, starting this month.

Knowledge and Skills

Discovering blogs and Google Reader has been invaluable as a way to get exposed to new technology, news and ideas.  However, I have done little to build actual skills, like creating Web software, creating a marketing plan, or establish a new business.  To start, I need to define a couple of specific skills to work on this year, and then get working on them.

Career

For the last 15 years, I’ve pretty much relied on opportunities to come to me, and for some reason, they actually have.  Every couple of years, as I start to feel a little stale, something new has come up and taken my career in a new direction.  This year, after 2 years in the same role, I need to be more proactive in figuring out what’s next, and then taking specific steps to get there.  For the 1st quarter, I need to identify a few potential roles I could play next, and identify a plan to evaluate and move in that direction.

Family

After spending the last week and a half with the family for the holidays, I’m really struck about how quickly the kids are growing up.  I really need to make sure that we don’t squander these years.  We’ve done a good job over the last several months, I think, by taking the kids to movies more regularly, and finding new fun things to do as a family as well as “one-off” times like lunch out somewhere.  However, there’s always room for improvement.  In particular, I want to get them a laptop…it’s really amazing to see even 4 year old Billy play games on mine, and I really think they need the exposure.  Our trip to Disney World in April is also going to be a big event, because it will be the first real trip that we’ve all taken together.  I want to be sure that we spend some time in the next few months spending time as a family to figure out what we want to do on the trip, so that everyone has something to look forward to.

Social

Here’s another area that we’ve made some strides in over the last year, but have room for improvement.  We spent New Year’s Eve with a couple of families in the neighborhood, which was a ton of fun.  We need to find more opportunities to hang out with families around town, as well as time out with more couples.  We’ve done sporadic dinners with some of the guys at the Fire Dept and their wives, but we need to try to make those happen more often, as well as dinners with some of “the gang”. 

Well, that’s a start anyhow…what gets written down gets measured, what gets measured gets done. 

Happy 2008, all!!!!

Geek Song about Web 2.0

Cool Geek Song about Web 2.0

Just found on YouTube, this kinda funky, definitely geeky song all about the big players in the Web 2.0 space. Aside from the clever lyrics, the music actually isn’t all that bad.

Links for the Week Ending 2/17/07

More great stuff from around the Web over the past two weeks, as seen from the Top of the Tree…

 There doesn’t seem to be nearly enough time to check out all the cool things I come across on the Web (see my planned Turbo Tax and Zoho reviews – which haven’t been written yet - as an example).  Added to the list this week is newly launched Google Trends, which allows you to do some cool analysis into what people are searching on.  Joe Wikert does some analysis and takes a test drive on his Publishing 2020 Blog.

Apparently Google is going to keep adding to my “to-do” list, as it appears they are adding a “PowerPoint”-like tool to their productivity suite.  Coverage here at Googlesystem, and here at Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch.

And just for Valentine’s Day, Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users provides an interesting take on business success - perhaps it’s not so much about merit as it is about LOVE.  Kathy’s take is that what is good for the customer is what’s good for the business – an idea so simple it shouldn’t be as rare as it actually is.  Businesses need to stay focused on doing right by the customer, and the rest will follow. 

And that’s it for now…

Great Video on Web 2.0

Courtesy of Renee Blodgett’s Down the Avenue blog, here’s a great YouTube video put together by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas that highlights the history and the evolving power of the Web as it moves from a page-based paradigm to a richer, content and connection-based model.  Aside from the powerful message, it’s just plain fun to watch…

Links for the Week Ending 2/3/07

Another crazy week, in more ways than one!

Work remains as busy as ever, I completed the 2 week of my EMT-B certification, and a stomach virus swept through our household.  And, to top it all off, the city of Boston made the headlines for a surreal episode involving anti-terrorist task forces and talking fast food.  Here’s what caught my eye this week:

The Aqua Teen Hunger Force “attack” on Boston and 8 other US cities has to have been one of the more bizarre pop culture moments in recent history.  I won’t rehash the details, but commentary and links follow:

• Courtesy of BoingBoing, Mark Frauenfelder makes no bones about where he thinks the blame lies for Wednesday’s incident – the guvmint.
• Eric Rice has some interesting thoughts on the whole incident, when he asks if the reaction to the devices would have been different if the LEDs had been in the shape of Bart Simpson.
• And, if you have no idea what any of this is all about, here’s Boston.com’s coverage of the ATHF “guerilla marketing gone wrong” incident.

 For what it’s worth, while in retrospect the entire thing seems a little silly, I think those who are railing against the “overreactions” of the Boston and Massachusetts authorities are overlooking a couple of things. 

First, while a big deal is made about the fact that the devices had been in place in 8 other US cities, it appears that most of the other cities the billboards were affixed to buildings, NOT to the undersides of bridges and subway platforms.  Also, while some of the devices had been put up for a couple of weeks, the ones that triggered the response on Wednesday had just been put up on Tuesday evening. 

Second, while the media has focused on Turner Broadcasting’s part in this whole event, there has not been much attention paid to Interference, the marketing company who actually planned and executed the event.  The only thing that made my blood boil upon reading the coverage was that one of the guys arrested for placing the billboards was contacted by a representative of the company on Wednesday, as the city was in the midst of a massive police mobilization, and told to keep quiet, and not tell the authorities anything. 

Finally, it appears that there was at least one other, unrelated bomb scare on the Longfellow bridge as the event unfolded, leading to the appearance of a coordinated event of some kind.  It’s fascinating how the whole day unfolded as a kind of cascade of minor events that built into a major event.  My feeling is that the same set of circumstances would have caused a similar reaction in any city around the country, but I’m not sure if that’s OK or not.  It’s just a part of who we are here and now in 2007.

In other, non-terrorism related news, the push towards “software as a service” marches on, with Zoho announcing a new online whitespace called Notebook.  See here for TechCrunch coverage.  I’m going to try it this week, and hope to post a review of the tool shortly.

 Finally, Pam Slim offers up another great podcast on breaking away from corporate America on her Escape from Cubicle Nation blog, this time on facing and conquering the fear of taking that first big step to entrepreneurship.

That’s it for now…look for a review of Zoho Notebook, and some observations on Intuit’s TurboTax web-based offering later this week.

Links for the Week Ending 1/27/07

Some random interesting links I’ve come across this week…

Interesting studies show a trend towards two emerging groups of new entrepreneurs – 20-somethings and baby boomers.  The question is, where does that leave an aging Gen X-er like me?  Courtesy of Jeff Cornwall and his Entrepreneurial Mind blog

More blurring of the lines between Second Life and the “real life” of work, as IBM extends their real-world Lotus conference into the metaverse.  Courtesy of Second Life Insider

Help for budding entrepreneurs and start-up artists is here!  Pam Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation is collaborating with Startup Nation’s Jeff and Rich Sloan, and John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing to offer a coaching program for start-ups entitled “10 Steps to Open for Business”.  If I wasn’t already taking a class this semester, I’d be fighting for a spot in this one – hopefully this will be the first in a series of similar programs.

Staying in the start-up / small business vein, John Marrioti pens a fascinating look at anticipated trends facing small business in 2007 at Small Business Trends.  One of the most interesting notes is the very first point – that the exodus of talent away from corporate America to the world of small business or self-employment is expected to continue unabated in 2007.

Tara Hunt offers an interesting take on the meaning of economic progress and the metrics used to measure that progress on her HorsePigCow blog.  Tara and her PiC Chris Messina are the drivers behind Citizen Agency, a San Francisco consultancy that’s taking a refreshing approach to a hidebound business.

That’s it for now…enjoy the rest of the weekend, and here’s best wishes for a great week ahead!

Another Take on RSS Readers

After posting yesterday on the things that I like and dislike about the Google Reader, I remembered this post of Dave Winer’s from last week, taking an alternative view to the “Unread Items count” issue.  He makes a good point, and after all, he’s probably the leading thinker on this kind of stuff, but I would still rather see how many unread items I have.  Maybe my brain just doesn’t work right