“Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.”
–Lawrence Durrell
Every sales effort comes down to answering one question: “So what makes this different?” Meaning, of course, “How is this better for me?” To the best sales reps, these are welcome questions. They have the answer, because they know the secret of being a great rep, having sold themselves to employers who offer something different and better.
What got me thinking about sales situations was talking to one of the two men who patented the game Twister, the one who sold it to Milton Bradley Co.
In a previous column, I quoted Reyn Guyer as the man who came up with the game, but I have since spoken with one of the two men listed on the patent, and it turns out that Charles Foley and Neil Rabens were working for Guyer when they developed and patented Twister.
Twister was one example of Reyn Guyer’s notion that “Good ideas break a rule.” (In the case of Twister, it was the social taboo of public intertwining of bodies.) Having studied hundreds of innovations, my own formula is, “Great ideas solve a problem.” And from Charles Foley, I learned that Twister solved a consumer problem.
Foley tells me that the company had been working on something that resembled a human chessboard, where people stood on a floor mat. The game, called “King Footsie,” never caught on, but Foley was interested in one seemingly unimportant aspect of the game–it meant taking off your shoes. Foley realized, “When people take their shoes off, they are different people.” It hit him that what he was looking at could become a party game, an “icebreaker.” He explained, “Anybody who entertains knows the fear of people sitting in corners.”
So he and artist Rabens started working on variations. They started with one person on the mat and a second calling out positions. As Foley watched Rabens contorting, he suddenly decided to join in. Imagine what it must have looked like for passersby in the hallways–the laughing comments convinced the pair that they had achieved a game worth watching.
So they made a mock-up, and Foley took it to a contact at Milton Bradley. The buyer asked his version of the customer question, “I’ve seen lots of mat games; what makes you think you’ve got the answer?”
Foley replied that it was going to make for great parties. He suggested stating it on the box: “Guaranteed to make your party a success or your money back.”
Foley got the buyer and his assistant to play the game, in the buyer’s office. “It was nothing but laughter. The buyer looked up laughing from the mat and said, `We’re going to buy this one.'”
Looking back over some of the toys that I had tried to test against the “break a rule” rule, I see the “solve a problem” solution often fits as well or better:
Ruth Handler came up with Barbie after watching her daughter dressing up paper dolls. The paper dolls were dressed up with no place to go–you could dress them but not really play with them.
G.I. Joe allowed boys to play with dolls without nervous parents rushing them off for psychoanalysis.
Matchbox cars evolved from following a rule, not breaking it, and thereby solving a problem: The inventor’s daughter wanted to take a toy carriage to school for show-and-tell, but the teacher had a rule that students could only bring items that would fit in a matchbox. It also allowed kids to carry several cars around in a pocket.
If a product doesn’t solve a problem, it’s (A) doomed, (B) a gimmick (which means it succeeds awhile before being doomed), or (C) art (beauty is its own justification).
If you have to sell based on personality or gimmicks, then get another job. Either you are educating or you’re wasting everyone’s time.
