Page 186 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

21 Tips for Selling Creative Ideas 177

Loman. People love a good yuk. Sometimes what you’re selling has
serious consequences. So lighten it up. Have some fun.
I’m not necessarily saying walk in with your rabbi joke, but I prefer
a light atmosphere come show time. Sometimes that’s really hard to do
because so much is at stake. But sometimes the more that’s at stake, the
more nervous energy there is, and then they’ll laugh at anything. Have
some fun. Talk about something light. Talk about positive things before
you get into the heavy stuff. It’s like the dancing that Muhammad Ali
does before he delivers the knockout punch. I don’t want to put this in
the context of combat, but it’s just a matter of keeping it light before
you get into the heavy stuff.

Up Your Curtain
Another method that helps to sell ideas is theater. I like to use the pre-
sentation as an opportunity to get people excited, to entertain them.
People love to be entertained. People will pay $80 for a theater ticket,
$8 to see a movie, $75 for a concert seat, $60 for a ball game. You can
give them entertainment for free when you’re selling, and it just might
grease the skids to help your idea see the light of day. I’m not talking
about song and dance in the cheap carnival sense—although some-
times it could border on that if that works.
I got a big lesson in using theater to sell when many years ago the
ad agency I was working for lost a new business pitch to a guy who
ran a very small creative shop. To neutralize the size advantage and
make a couple of other points as well, this daring small agency owner
carried a half-dozen mannequins into the prospect’s conference room
to help make his pitch. Word was the client felt the empty suits made
about as much of a contribution to the meeting as the other agency’s
phalanx of executives, and at a much lower hourly rate.

7

SALESMANSHIP LONG ON THEATRICS

Theater can take lots of forms. One of my favorite theater tricks is
something I performed years ago. This particular act was more pan-
tomime than song and dance. We said nothing. In fact, a passive, static
prop provided all the theater. This particular selling idea came directly
out of the advertising idea that we were trying to sell, which came
directly out of this product’s primary point of difference. My ad