My father almost died last November. According to the doc, he was about an hour away from death. He’s fine now and back to normal. But, needless to say, I’ve come to look at my Dad a little closer. And because he was in recovery, I spent a little over a month doing the heavy lifting. Literally.
You see, my father is a salesman. Good, old-fashioned, pre-Don Draper salesman. His product? Gourmet foods, which is a fancy way of saying frozen meat. That’s where the heavy lifting comes in. Christmas is his busiest time of year. And someone had to carry all that meat. But my exploits in manual labor turned out to be an education all on it’s own.
It took me a hot minute to really catch the similarity, but my father and I are in the exact same profession. He sells with charm. I sell with words that better be charming. And, in the end, I saw the kind of wisdom and finesse from a master tradesman that I never found in a $32k education or a book or a blog post.
So, without further ado, I present Stan the Meat Man’s Guide to Selling Something Successfully to Customers You’ll Keep for 30 Years.
1. Be proud of your product. That means making sure there are no grease stains on the box. Everyone in advertising talks about drinking the Kool-Aid. But no one bothers to ask if you even like Kool-Aid. You’re just supposed to suck it down, particularly in this economy. The truth is, you better find a way to mix that Kool-Aid to a drinkable state, or eventually you’ll just spit it out.
2. They aren’t your customers. They’re your friends. So get to know them, beyond their demographic information. Know about their kids. Flirt a little. Have real conversations. And be important enough to be asked to be a pallbearer at their mothers’ funeral.
3. Honesty is the best policy. This is the one that separates a salesman from a peddler. Because a salesman who is a friend can give recommendations that you’ll trust. A salesman who is a friend knows why you’ll value a product. And a salesman who is a friend can help you see that value.
3 simple things. But I see it now.
So I was looking back in time (aka, reading old posts on Confessions of a Creative Recruiter), and Cecilia asked the age-old question, Why Me? What makes me different? Why am I better than the next writer?
My answer to this is best conveyed through a story. I was in 6th grade. The height of my school district’s newest fiasco - the school uniform debate. It was Language Arts class (I never stopped to consider what a great name that is for a class, by the way). And the assignment was to write a persuasive paper, taking an opinion on the school uniform debate.
My paper rocked. I loved writing it. I went nuts. I cooked up some elaborate story on what would basically be the next revolutionary war were the uniform ruling to go into effect. Students would rebel. The school would fall to shambles. Teachers would be out of jobs. Unemployment would skyrocket. The entire infrastructure of this country would thus be ended by making us wear uniforms. I may have gone a bit overboard with the whole scenario. But I had written the next Declaration of Independence.
When it came time to turn in our papers, Mrs. Horne decided to have us read them aloud to the class. Being ever the eager beaver (read: overachiever), I was the first to deliver my Declaration. It quickly became the Boston Tea Party. The other students clapped and cheered. Mrs. Horne busted out laughing. And while my delivery was no Patrick Henry, everyone loved my words.
It was so incredibly fulfilling. A high. One of those times when your heart aches and the pain reminds you that great love hurts. Something I wrote got people genuinely, honestly excited. Last week my art director told me that one of my lines almost made her cry. And that’s it.
I love it. I love writing. I’m passionate about it. It’s part of who I am. And it’s what will come across in each ad. The best ads are honest. Honest ads are made by honest people. The one thing that I will say about myself, above anything else, is that I am honest, for better or for worse. It almost always works out for the best.
Sorry for such a lengthy post. This wasn’t the one to be brief on.
People hate change. We all come around to it. But sometimes it seems like more of an effort to get people to accept change than it is to actually make the changes. Which is a bit of a conundrum in itself. Why make changes if the payoff is so distant?
I bring this up because Facebook has, yet again, changed it’s layout. And people are annoyed. Annoyed because they have to learn something new. Annoyed because they have to find a new comfort zone. Annoyed because all they want to do is waste time without exerting effort.
So the question is what is Facebook doing? My friend Dave Gordon gave the best answer - “Facebook is trying to be the new Twitter. Which was trying to be the new Facebook.”
So in order to stay relevant, do you constantly have to change?
We rely on people to go with the flow. It is the very essence of doing something new. But when does it become too much? When does People hate change become People hate Facebook? How far can they push it? And within the context of the beast that is social media, how can they afford not to?
