The  short answer is successful people have shtick  and a proven strategy to stand out.  Webster defines shtick as, one’s special trait, interest, or activity.  Every single person has it but few ever really develop it to its full potential.

Larry King will go down in history as one of the most successful broadcasters in the history of radio and TV. He worked at developing his shtick by being passionate about broadcasting. But this came after he paid his dues. Early in his career he had an unstable work history being fired and even having a brush with the law.  Fearful of his creditors calling the radio station live on the air, he manged to keep them at bay long enough to turn things around. How did Larry rise from being a deadbeat to being a multi-million dollar brand?  

Through an accident, fate, or both he found his shtick when he got a gig from an advertiser at the radio station he worked for. A restaurant seeking to increase their lunch hour traffic and a starving disc jockey thrown together by forces that would make history.  They contracted to do a remote live broadcast from the restaurant. Needing to fill the time slot, Larry decided to interview ordinary patrons.  This was the school of life where Larry honed his skills to develop the art of the interview. 

In a short time listeners could not get enough of this reality program.  Of course they wanted to try out this new restaurant hoping to be one of the lucky few to be interviewed to tell their story to The King. The ratings bonanza proved to be a win3 success. The advertiser and radio station won and Larry could finally take his shtick to the bank.

What can one learn from Larry and other people with shtick that are influential social marketers? The first step is to uncover or define clearly what your shtick is or could be. If you have no idea, not to worry, neither do the majority.  Knowing thyself is the key.

If you were being interviewed by Larry how would you answer these questions?

• What do you do and how did you get started doing this?
• How long have you been doing this?
• What part of the country or what other country are you from?
• What was your very first job and how did that influence you in selecting your career?
• What is your chosen field and when did you selected this?
• What awards or recognitions have you acquired doing this?
• What is one thing that you are outstanding at?
• What are you most proud of?
• If your work was featured on the cover of The New York Times what would the headline?
• What expert knowledge or training do you have that people should know?
• Describe what you do using only adjectives to describe the benefits you provide.
• What value added do you bring to the table?
• How can you help individuals or organizations better than anyone?
• What are your forecasts for the future in your industry and why should companies know this?
• What is the biggest deal you have done and what did you learn from that?
• What has been the most difficult setback you have triumphed over  and what did that teach  you?
• What have you done to help customers benefit from or minimize the setbacks from the economic downturn?
• How do you help clients not lose sleep from worrying about their business?
• What is the most interesting and unusual client or deal you have executed or handled?
• If the roles were turned knowing what you know, why would you do business with your company?
• Why would you offer with confidence your product or services to friends and family?
• What time sensitive compelling offer do you have for companies?
• What would you do just for the love of it?
• What charities do you give time or resources to?

Answering these interrogatives will flush out and distill your social dna to package into your shtick. Once you are clear on what it is, you can be shameless in broadcasting it to your social network.  One recommendation from personal experience is keep your family and close friends in a separate group. You can use pictures, quotes and stories to advertise your shtick.  If you develop an art doing it, you will be on people’s radar. You will stand out as someone to know and a magnet to attract the “right”  people and make genuine friends.  Social media is what superstars in the three to seven percentile have always known, you know and are known by the movers and shakers that are deal makers.

Simon Cowel is an icon of people we love to hate. It is a great ploy to turn American Idol into one of the hottest shows on television. He also happens to be a brand within the larger brand known as “American Idol’. Today’s media is fragmented and it takes a bigger bang to get attention.

Even Viacom’s CEO Sumner Redstone would be forgiving of Simon Cowel’s publicity antics if his network owned the show. By comparison Tom Cruise would be a centered monk next to Simon. He may be the most famous critic everyone loves to hate. We just cannot seem to get enough American Idol, it is an undisputed run away success phenomena.

Its viewers are estimated to be a staggering 30 million week to week. By comparison, the major networks are fighting fiercely to grab a finite number of Americans who still tune in to watch the evening news.

The market is so competitive that with a mere difference of less than 3 million viewers the former bright eyed and bushy tailed Katie Couric could lose her multimillion dollar job.

Americans now have a multitude of choices to tune into. This sure beats the big three networks of the bygone era. In the golden days of baby boomers, Americans tuned in to view The Cosby Show. It was also a paradoxical success.

Its success may have been due to, in part, to the fact that there were only two other choices. Cable has become the leveler of the playing field. With hundreds of channels, what can a network do to keep the competitive edge? Even worse, American consumers are now choosier than ever. These days it takes creativity, imagination, and more than a little luck to make a hit show.

Simon Cowel will forever be associated with Amercian Idol. So why do we tune in to this buzz machine? This became a focus of attention for me when a colleague in a board meeting requested that we get down to business because her show was waiting.

What do you do when your agenda (program) has to compete with the thrill of Simon’s harsh brand of criticism that decimates the would be singers? Enter time magazine to the rescue. In the issue of April 16 the writer James Poniewozik saved me days of research to distill the reasons we love American Idol.

It became apparent that the advertising industry could learn something from this article. It could be the salvation of many a lack luster results of marketing campaigns. Here is the down and dirty or “Readers Digest” version, As my Mami was so fond of saying:

Americans like hearing a story.

American Idol is not about signing. It’s a melodrama ruled over by the three judges. Simon reigns supreme. It’s much like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, “Off with their heads!” Viewers seem to be addicted like crack junkies to the drama of the stars and the contestants.

Singing just happens to be one of the vehicles used to tell the story. So if you are a mom and pop operation, what compelling story could you tell to intrigue the apathetic faceless demographic?

Americans like to route for the under dog.

We like the good guys to win, up to a point. Our childhood belief is nice guys finish first. The reality of life, however, taught me a different story. Mr. Poniewozik says, “ We reward the best and cut the laggards, however kind or hard working they are.

Idol voting tugs at your deepest secret emotions and it levels the playing field, somewhat, for the not so fantabulous.” There is a lesson here for the small advertiser. You do not have to be a bemoth brand to have your share of the market. The consumer will choose you and even pay a little more if you are perceived supporting the community or the like. This is the strategy small town retail shops use to fight against Wal-Mart.

Americans like to be surprised by what we alreadyknow.

Critics can see a broad range of genres that are remakes of the classics. American Idol “celebrates interpretation not creation.” Multimillion dollar campaigns go down in flames much to the dismay of their creators. They were so original that they failed to factor the connection to the past associations of the psyche of the consumer.

Our vibrant and dynamic economy was built on the backs of the past. Coke learned this costly lesson also when it scraped its formula for a totally new recipe. It created such hysteria that I was told by one former Coke employee that people were stock piling cases of coke in their garage fearing the end of their thrist quencher. So if you have some unique product or service tell them how this is just like the old but new and improved.

Americans do not need sex to be entertained!

Well…not at least as far as American Idol is concerned. Imagine a TV show that parents can sit down to watch with the whole family. No one has to turn shades of red over sexuality oozing out of the tube. The producers are mirroring back to women what they want to watch since two thirds of the voters are ……..(drum roll )…… WOMEN.

Maybe marketers could learn that to engage a broader audience femininity in good taste still trumps progesterone oozing off the pages of print ads or invoking bedroom images from radio or TV advertising.

Americans like to be pandered to.

According to Herman Hermit, and Peter, two recent guests on American Idol, “It’s a voting competition rather than a singing competition.” If you expect to advance, you better study films of past great politicians. It’s a campaign, rather than a competition.

You need grace, candor, and warm fuzzies coming out of your vocal cords to resonate with the masses. Just like politics you can win an election but not be able to govern. If you expect to sell records you must have reserves of stage charisma that can be recorded. This was the hard lesson Taylor Hicks learned when his recent released album had disappointing sales.

Other casualties of Idol have developed a cult following that has bought millions of their records. Politicking is such a science that you must be assertive but gracious mixed with charm. If you are a small business owner and depend on mixers to network, it’s critical that you learn the art of politics to politic your way to their mind and pocketbook. This is public relations 101 at its best.

Soooooooooooo, the question becomes “How can I captivate a market place that tunes out the majority of advertising it is bombarded with?” If one discovers the secret formula, rest assured that marketers will beat a path to his or her door.

Then they will be summarily displaced when something bigger and brighter captures the attention of the American public. Such is the world of marketing. One author who I met recently is one of the thousands of marketers in search of the Holy Grail.

In his book, Are You Waiting For Your Cat To Bark, he points to how we need to get a reality check. The game of advertising and marketing has changed. This caused me to do a double take and think “Hey wait a minute! What if I was to become the Hispanic Simon Cowel who puts on a competition for would be marketers?” Anyway, what do you do to get your message out to the masses with media fragmented into literally thousands of options?

Do you pay or reward people to listen to your commercial as one of the latest ploys of a marketer that will give you a soda pop out of a dispensing machine after you watch a commercial? Let me ponder this question and I’ll get back to you. In the mean time happy viewing and hasta la pasta mis amigos.

~Victor

ps. I wrote this post in the summer of 2008 so some facts may be dated.

They know how their product or service is the solution for the qualified company.  In today’s highly volatile marketplace every company large or small is faced with unexpected problems.  You have heard and read the cliché phrase, “sell benefits.”  The stellar salesperson is a modern day Sherlock Holmes at finding the elementary problems of key accounts they are targeting to position themselves to be the preferred vendor with the solution mojo.

In my own experience I once targeted a company that the sales cycle was a year to get the first order. It was part luck, part knowing their problems, and having a breakthrough solution from our R&D department.  That one small trial order progressed into growing that company into the second largest account in sales revenue.

We have entered into an era of specialization.  The superstar salespeople know how to become experts at providing simple solutions to complex problems.

Part II

They get the job done!  It sounds so basic and yet so difficult to achieve by mediocre salespeople.  Superstar sales people have the stick to itiveness.  They show up for preset appointments prepared.  They follow through on promises made during the initial sales call when they are in the discovery phase of the customer’s real problems. They attend to the details of processing work orders to make it frictionless.

Once they have the order they track it to completion.  The product or service is delivered, the order is paid, and the process starts all over again.  There is a multiplicity of reasons why a select few 20% (Paredo Princicle) sell the lion’s share of commerce; this may be one of the top ones.  One small book that transformed my sales career was, “The Blue Vaser”, the story of a go getter.   A compelling story of a crass salesperson that against all odds, would not give up.

Part III

They love some or all aspects of the sales process.  No one succeed or got rich by doing something they hated. This love is a form of inner motivation from the positive feelings the salesperson gets.  Some get a rush from filling out the paperwork or hearing the sweet words that they beat out the competition and got the order.  Others have a genuine love for meeting and interacting with new people.   Even if they are turned down when cold calling they get a positive feeling in the brief interaction.

The superstar sales person identifies strongly with the product or service they are selling.  When this happens great things happen because the salesperson takes ownership of the whole process.  This leads to becoming self employed rather than working for a paycheck putting in the time.

Part IV

They live in a unique subjective emotional reality.  This goes beyond being the proverbial half glass full optimists.   Superstars have the emotional alchemy to literally be wizards at deal making.

They have emotional centeredness or congruency (everything in it’s place).

This is the phenomena that legends are made of.  Napoleon Hill in his book ,”Think and grow Rich”,  alluded to it with a sexual twist.  The superstar is not born though some are.  The majority had to work at mastering their emotions. One’s  emotions can be the secret horsepower that levels the playing field in a fiercely competitive world that will get more competitive.  Emotions can inspire and raise one to champion status or defeat one even before one makes the first cold call.

If this is an area one needs to master, a great book that changed my life is ”Feeling Good” by David Burns MD.

Part V

They are learning machines for new fresh knowledge and its application.  They invest heavily in themselves by reading industry books and periodicals.  They purchase motivational books, audio visual materials, conferences, seminars, trade shows to stay ahead of the competition.  This thirst for knowledge makes them open minded as well as innovative for new approaches for execution of the deal.

According to NY Times reporter Chris Hedges, “A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.”

Flabby minds can never out perform the mental horse power of sales superstars that have the breadth and depth of knowledge.

Part VI

They are cold calling machines!  Their brain is wired to go on autopilot when they are in their “game.”  In modeling projects I have participated in to profile sales super achievers this is a common trait they all have.

They have their elevator pitch honed.  They view cold calling a game you play rather than the current business metaphor of a hunt.  In my opinion  it’s a more effective mindset to play a game and not score rather than the prey becoming the predator or  getting away.

In interviewing  persons that engaged in high pressure direct sales such as selling religion, books, cookware, vacuum cleaners, insurance, time shares, coupon books, etc.  These career superstars loved the game of engagement.  Because it’s a game they don’t take the rejection personal.  There are many smart educated talented candidates that failed in sales because their success depended on that illusive and dreadful cold call.

Part VII

Sales superstars are either born or defined by life’s circumstances. In my case it was both.  As a kid, I was selling newspapers and gum on the streets of Piedras Negras Mexico.  I still recall the magic of seeing people reach into their pockets to exchange their pesos for my daily paper.

These days the magic is still there even with large or small work orders.  In my mind  advertising is the Mona Lisa.  Advertising is an art that is a product of several disciplines.  These include psychology, linguistics, sociology, photography, and others.

Over the years I have studied many sales models and have even taught my own version.  At the risk of  dating myself  my first inspiration in sales was Earl Nightingale. I dreamed of one day growing up and having a large audience like Earl and did as a radio broadcaster.  Even on the air I knew that I had to sell ideas disguised as entertainment.

~Victor