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Thanks for splitting this off Brock, and if anyone's just joined this - there's probably some useful information in the previous thread - just before it closed I posted an old internal document I wrote for my marketing company years back.
[quote=Brock]In marketing a tremendous amount of energy goes into something called "the elevator speech". It is essentaially your ENTIRE PITCH in 45 seconds. You have to say what you do, why it is special, how you are different, and communicate the benefit to the client. Trust me when I tell you that is tough. Excruciatingly so.
Someone should poke a LOT of holes in your elevator speech. Brutal honesty is what you need here. CEOs don't like this process, VPs don't like this process, and luthiers definitely don't like this process.. but it is one of the conerstones (IMO) to success. This pitch has to be perfect.[/quote]
I tended to eschew this method, largely because in the UK we're a cynical bunch, and the elevator speech is very American. Now, I know that might sound bad, but it's not a value statement, it's purely experience which told us the short sharp pitch never really worked over here.
We found that truly successful marketing was all about asking questions and not making statements. There's a good phrase which covers this: Telling is not Selling. If you're telling the prospect what you do, you're not selling to them. Sure, sometimes it will work, but you'll get more misses than hits (at least this side of the pond anyway).
Instead, having a secure and thorough understanding of where your value proposition sits, you are able to ask the right questions to establish that you are a match to your prospect's needs, then can use the very answers the prospect gave to demonstrate that. People are much better at selling to themselves than we could ever be at selling to them.
The 'Key Creative Takeout' is as close as we came to a pitch, which is in essence the message you want the prospect to have after your interaction. The key thing here though, is that you allow the prospect to form that picture themselves and don't spell it out for them.
[quote=Brock]How many times have you heard "We are the industry leader providing quality products at a competitive price." --- YAWN!!!! That means absolutely nothing because EVERYONE SAYS IT. NOT ONE CONSUMER ON THIS EARTH BELIEVES THIS STATEMENT --- but you can bet your paycheck the guys in the boardroom have it engraved on a plaque over the door.
You have to communicate something real, something believable, and something unique to pierce the consumers armor and get their attention.[/quote]
Very very true, Brock! And it's good to see a small businessman who already understands this. :) In essence the reason this is so unbelievable is that it means nothing. After all, if you were a prospect, you'd hope they would believe they were industry leading, and that their products were quality and competitively priced. After all, the alternative is them telling you that they believe they're tailing the rest of their industry and they make somewhat shoddy products which are overly-expensive. No one's going to say that are they? Given that fact, the original statement has no impact.
We used to concentrate on what we called 'five power words' in terms fo value propositions. You would try to come up with one or more statements which began with each of these words. It was the result of a study into which words, psychologically, made people sit up and listen. They are all about what you can do for the prospect. The words were: Increase, Improve, Reduce, Save, Gain.
I'd suggest that in terms of luthierie, without spending the time on looking into it in detail, we'd probably be concentrating on the Gain statements.
[quote=Ken]I have a weird approach to selling guitars. I let them sell themself.[/quote]
This isn't wierd at all (which I hope you're pleased to know). In fact I'd go so far as to say I've never marketed a product which isn't capable of selling itself. ;)
What you do, by the sounds of it, and if you don't mind me being analytical for a moment, is paint a romantic picture of the production process and allow your prospects to fall in love with the process, the maker, and then by association they believe they will automatically love the final product.
This technique tend to work much better on smaller-scale word-of-mouth type operations (as I think was mentuioned in the last thread) and is a lot harder to pull off large-scale.
To compare; the last time I saw a really successful large-scale romantic marketing campaign was probably that Budwieser one we had over here where they gave each bottle a 'Birthday' romanticising the whole brewing and bottling process. Of course, if you were to see it yourself you'd realise just how cold and industrial it was, but goodness me that campaign was a good one. :)
Anyway, the only real issue with romantic marketing is it's lack of scalability. because you make the size of your company a selling point, it makes it difficult to ramp up quickly should you decide you need to. However, given the activity you're engaged in I really can't see this being a problem. So I'd say for your proposition and your market position,assuming it's working at the rate you want it to, you've picked a good one, even if it was subconscious and it just feels natural to you. :)
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