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"Hey You, Mr. Short, Fat, Ugly Guy with Bad Hair... Quick, Pop in This Picture with Me”
Red Stripe Beer nailed this marketing concept... Read away & hopefully you will too.
Asking for Money and Dates
I’ve spent a lot of time recently doing two things.
- Pitching Investors.
- Cruising the Internet’s abundant resource of online dating sites.
Each one of these activities, as opposite as they may seem, are very similar in what it takes to succeed. Being successful is somewhat about trial and error. You realize what works, what doesn’t, and depending on your core competencies, you learn what you should never do. I boast that my greatest quality is the number of mistakes I’ve accumulated in my life. Now, I’m not a habitual loser; eventually, I always end up on top. There simply isn't a "how-to" manual or treasure map of the path to success in most of life's meaningful pursuits. If I were much older I'd say I was wise. I'm not, so I'll just stick with the fact that I try to learn and teach others from my mistakes.
Last week I had one of those eye opener’s during an investor pitch. While delivering our message, I realized how many darts I was throwing that weren't even hitting the board.
The Standard Questions
When speaking to investors, undoubtedly you will hear these questions:
- Who are your competitors?
- How much competition is there?
- What makes you different than your competition?
I had a response typical of most entrepreneurs. We all believe that we are one of a kind, and I'm no different. We are inventive, we innovate, we work hard, we think we're more industrious than most of the competition. So when asked these questions I would say: “We are different. Honestly, we don’t have a lot of competition. We are the only ones who do XYZ with our widgets." The response, while somewhat valid, didn’t really answer my investors' questions. More importantly, I wasn’t communicating how bad ass I a really am.
With nothing to compare to, how do you know something is just that good?
Where I Went Wrong
A little about the credit card industry: I am in one of the most competitive marketplaces that exists. We provide merchant services, which consists of merchant accounts, gift cards, and credit card machines to small and midsized business. Our industry is extremely attractive because of residual income. Every time someone swipes a credit card, we make money. It’s genius.
Naturally, everyone and their mother that discovers the credit card business begins to dream of the holy grail: money for doing nothing. So here they come, wide eyed dreamers pouring into the credit card business ready to realize the American dream, singing a Dire Straights hit from 1985..."Money for nothin' and your chicks for free... Now that ain't workin', that's the way you do it".
There is a common joke in our office that describes most of our competition’s marketing strategies.
“Yup, those guys are working the MCI Friends and Family Plan… You know, when the guy who was paving driveways last week is now a credit card "expert", calls his uncle who owns a sandwich shop and his college buddy who has a sporting goods store to race over and sign em’ up…. Got it? The MCI Friends and Family Plan..”
After signing up their first 3 customers, messing up 8 days of credit card transactions in their friends' businesses, and looking like a complete idiot because of the complexity of the business, the new found grail seeker say’s, “man, that really sucked, but it was worth it, here comes the money…”
Approximately 90 days later, the magical residual payday hits.. He jumps on his computer, pops open the long awaited residual report, and sees a whopping $87.32 in his account. A week later, his buddy switches back to his previous provider because his terminal still isn’t working correctly, and his other account has called him 15 times for service issues. Needless to say, 30 days later, Mom is now back to volunteering at Walmart and the Paving Engineer is back slinging asphalt.
A Statement That Couldn’t be Further From the Truth
“We do things differently… We don’t really have any competition.”
A Restless CEO
After about my 3rd road show pitch, I was a bit frustrated. We were fully prepared. We have been following my fortune 500 CFO’s agenda for us to cover point by point. I usually thrive on the opportunity to speak and get energized by an attempt to tell someone how great I am. Given the opportunity to speak, I captivate, entertain, and excite an audience. I have as much fun if not more than my audience. However in this case, by the end of the third pitch, I was feeling completely exhausted, run down, and unfulfilled. Things weren’t exactly working the way I'm accustomed to. I'm guessing my potential investors were feeling just as frustrated.
I don’t have a lot of patience. I say that very abruptly, because I don't have a whole lot of patience. I usually throw a temper tantrum if things don't go my way.
We began our 4th pitch, we started down the same song and dance. My CFO nailed the extreme detail to which we understand our marketplace, our niche, target customer, and how fundamentally sound of an offering we have. Then, like clockwork, came the three magic questions.
- Who are your competitors?
- How much competition is there?
- What makes you different than your competition?
As my CFO began to dive into more market data, I couldn’t sit still any longer. I blurted out as confidently as a CEO can make a statement,
“To better answer your question on competition and what makes me different than the competition, I’ll make it simple. We have tons… We have so much competition it’s crazy. So if you are looking for market data, roll with this: Take whatever competition you think exists and multiply it by about 100. As to what makes me different. I'm just that good. When I say our core competency is sales, I mean we make it rain. You know when you walk into a bar, and there's that one really hot girl in a sea of mediocrity? Yeah, I’m her…”
I went on to explain how professional our reps look, their 5 weeks of training, the custom software they use to do analysis, etc, etc, etc.... My blood was pumping and the crowd was cheering. I grabbed their ear and their heads started bobbing like they were in a Snoop Dog video.
My "rap" game in a pressure situation is nothing short of B-Rabbit in the movie 8 Mile. In my prior three meetings, I had taken a back seat my numbers guy. But finally, my impatience reinforced what I knew all along, crowds come to the show to see you perform, not to analyze your lyrics.
Two weeks later we received a letter of intent from this group not only to invest in the company, but to take it a step further and take our company public.
The Ugly Twin
You’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with online dating. I’m not sure if you’ve checked out an online dating site recently, but there is more competition in that female, made to order catalogue, than there is on eBay. I’m a member of a rather exclusive website catering to successful professionals between the ages of 25-40. Yeah, believe it or not, real people really do this. I have met a few women through electronic commerce. While there were no love connections, I’ve made some good friends and met amazing people that would have otherwise gotten lost in the shuffle at happy hour.
Shortly after the exchange with the investors and seeing how my outburst won over their hearts, I came across a page of a girl named Katheryn. She was adorable. Without describing my weaknesses, she met all of my surface criteria. I clicked through to check out her profile, and immediately saw three picutures of her and her identical twin sister. Well, almost identical. She forgot to mention in her profile that her twin sister was way hotter than she was.
Yes, I’m shallow. I didn’t send a message because somehow she just didn’t seem that attractive anymore. Can I really be the guy who dates the ugly twin? Can you?
Valuing Beauty – The Secret to My Company Success
So what happened to Katheryn? Quick Lesson – Don’t post pictures with your friends on the internet trying to get dates if your friends are that are much better looking than you are. You are more likely to get a message asking if your friend is single than obtaining any new love prospect.
This is the same fundamental mistake, in a bit of opposite direction, I was making in my investor pitch. No, I didn't bring a sexier company with me to the pitch, but I hadn't done anything to make us attractive and sexy. Great numbers are like a girl with a great personality. Nobody dates the girl with just a great personality. You want the hot girl first and foremost, and if she happens to have a great personality, then you marry her.
Like I said to our investors, our core competency is sales... we make it rain. Our close ratio is 35% on a first appointment. We accomplish this solely by leveraging the fact that our competition appears completely incompetent, and every detail of our sales process screams professional, cutting edge, and competent. By the time we are done with a sales presenation, our prospects are nodding their head and looking for a pen. We create a truly, “be a part of something special” experience that they truly appreciate.
Dating, like sales, is trying to establish a dominance of beauty relative to your competion. A person, a sale, a touchdown pass, artwork, and even a sunny day, can be perceived as beautiful or ugly. And while Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, but there are some things we all just know are ugly.
If your target market doesn’t have an experience of true ugly to reference, how could your target market have any idea what they want or how beautiful you really are?
My company succeeds because we just look that much better than the next guy. Like Apple vs. Dell, our products are basically the same, but you just feel that much better buying from us.
Dating and pitching investors in no different. If you are going to sit on the shelf next to your competition, you’d better spend as much time on your personal brand as you do the widget in your busienss. You may want to rethink who your best friend is, or at least who you take photos with.
By the way, I have a new best friend... he's a little better looking that I'd hoped, but he's Picasso with Photoshop.
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