The client was named Skeeter. It’s one of those things that for whatever reason sticks in your memory.  It must have been the early 90’s.  Positively Outrageous Service had just been published.  I was still speaking for next to nothing, lucky to have a wife at home who never complained about just getting by.

When Skeeter booked the date, she moaned about her too small budget and said she would make the deal if I would agree to stay over an extra night and emcee her annual banquet.  (She needed an emcee.  I needed the fee. Done!)

On my way back to my hotel room I passed one of the attendees.  I said “Hello”;  He said, “I’m looking forward to hearing your presentation tonight.”

“I’m not presenting tonight.  Just introducing the VIPs.”  I said as I stopped and turned to face the direction from which I’d come.  He turned to mirror my maneuver.

“It says right here” he whipped a wrinkled yellow agenda from a pocket inside his sport coat,  “that you are doing a comedy routine.”

“Let me see that!”

He was right.  There it was in black and wrinkled yellow. “T. Scott Gross will open our gala affair with what is sure to become a comedy classic.”

That was not funny.

I raced to my room, fired up the Mont Blanc, and began to outline something that was funny but far short of a comedy classic.

When people decide that you are funny they immediately respond by trying to be funny, too.  (They rarely are.)  One of my biggest fans from the morning session was self-appointed to introduce me. Not to be out done by the guy being paid to be funny, he headed to the bookstore where he found a small paperback titled, The World’s Worst Jokes.  Whoever came up with that title was right on target!

My so-called fan told first one stinker and then another.  Each punchline earned a tired groan from the audience which only served to encourage our tormentor: “Okay, okay, let’s try another one.”

With the audience slipping toward coma, Mr. Personality suddenly closed his little book and said, “Without further ado… T. Scott Gross.”   Then just to make certain I had the situation accurately pegged he added, “I don’t think these guys are in the mood for comedy.”

I don’t remember much about the routine or how it was received.  I do remember looking nervously at my watch and wondering when the “real” entertainment would arrive.  Finally, the door at the back of the room cracked just a bit.  I saw the glint of tiny sequins, and knowing I was about to be saved, launched one last story before snatching the neatly printed introduction of Miss Tennessee, nineteen eighty something who was, no surprise, going to entertain us with a patriotic routine of baton twirling and tap dancing.

Not what I would have ordered for the evening but it saved my butt and now it was her turn and that was just fine with me!

Now there were just two tiny problems.  First, the ceiling in this room was barely ten feet.  This baton act would have to go into stealth mode because anything high enough to be seen by the audience would have to penetrate the drop in tiles.

Oh well, there’s always the tap dancing.  Except.  The same Skeeter who neglected to inform the speaker he had suddenly turned pro comedian had also neglected to have the hotel bring in a wood floor.  Yep-per, this tap routine would be performed on genuine, high pile, easy-to-care-for DEW-pont carpet!

Tap dance is lost on carpet.

Like the speaker who quickly wrote a comedy routine, Miss Whatever simply pushed a button on her boom box and in less than three minutes, the crowd had pushed away from their tables, struggled to rise from their chairs, and joined the now beaming young woman in a rousing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner!

When the music stopped and the applause died I stepped to the mic saying, “Thank-you very much.  You’ve been a great audience. Good night!”  I caught a quick smile from Miss Tennessee and headed to my room wondering if there would ever be another night quite like this.
There are many things that happen in our lives for which we think we have had no preparation.  But that is simply not true.  Everything we have experienced influences our decisions in the present.  Afternoons writing an emergency comedy routine and evenings spent tap dancing on carpet leave their mark.

For example I am in my eighth or ninth year of Parkinson disease.  I am also in the best physical condition of my life.  I can lift more, run farther, and am mentally sharper than ever.  Yes, I do have a bit of a tremor in my left hand but one of my tiny blue pills (not what you are thinking) or a couple of cold beers and the tremor goes away.  I do have trouble with those aggravating little buttons on my shirtsleeves.  But so what?  I always travel with Buns who just happens to be a world class buttonerupper!

I do walk funny but I’ve always walked funny.  It’s my nature.  My biggest fear is that they find a cure, nothing changes, and we discover I was just born a dork.

I may have Parkinson but Mr. Parkinson doesn’t have me! 

Could you honestly say to me that all those years of loving on audiences and helping them learn while they laugh hasn’t influenced my handling of this minor inconvenience?

What past experiences… if you brought them forward and put them to work… might help you right now? 

When you are hiring a new employee, understand that you are hiring past, present, and future behavior.  The purpose of an interview is to learn enough about past performance to predict future behavior.
 
If a sixty-ish woman wearing a sequined leotard and carrying a baton applies at your place… hire her!  She knows how to handle an audience.
 
“Now, please stand for our National Anthem!” 

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Hawking, it’s the art of selling to mass audiences like you would find at a sporting event, carnival, or parade. It’s the job of a hawker to stand out but one stands above them all. He out-sells the other hawkers two, three, sometimes four to one! He stands out mostly because of his arresting pitch, never taking the easy way out, shouting, “Cold beer, here,” or “ice cold Coke, ice cold Coke!”

Nope, he just sings out, “That’s what I got! Thaaat’s what I got!”

And guess what the crowd wants to know… “what is it?” They are arrested!

I got to drive the shopping bus today navigating from one super sale to the next, dutifully camping in front of each store with other devoted husbands until the prizes appeared, waiting geek-like with my nose stuck in a business book, a yellow highlighter poking from my shirt pocket.

At one mall campsite a pleasant young woman, clipboard pressed against her chest, asked if I would participate in a marketing survey and promised a five dollar reward for ten minutes or so of my already loaded itinerary.

“Sorry,” I lied, instantly feeling guilty. “I don’t have time. Shopping duty,” I explained and then headed in search of a Radio Shack.

When I returned to my post in front of department store number three I smiled and asked how many participants she had landed while I was gone. “None,” she replied looking down as if checking to see if she was still wearing shoes.

Her pitch had been a straight-forward, “Excuse me, would you like to earn $5 for participating in a marketing study?”

“Let’s try something different. How about, ‘Can you help me out? We’re doing a marketing survey and I need two more participants to complete our panel. And… you’ll make a quick five bucks for sharing your opinion!’ ”

She mouthed the words in quick rehearsal. Almost immediately a mark appeared. Bamm! We got a hit!

My new research assistant winked at me as she led her catch to the survey room.

Back on post, she instantly zeroed in on what would become hit number two!

I can’t tell you that was the perfect pitch. In fact, I’m sure it wasn’t but it did make me think about the value of working on the pitch. I wanted to stick around to refine the pitch and calculate our batting average but was called away to reposition the SUV so my power shopper could stay on schedule.

I love a good pitch as much as I hate poorly constructed ones or pitches that seem contrived, mechanical, or intrusive.

I’d like to know who is the idiot who taught the cart vendors to accost shoppers with this blatant offense, “Can I ask you a question?”  (No. You may not.)

Even a poorly constructed pitch can work if the delivery is exceptional. We watched (at least I did) a tall, gorgeous, young woman saunter to her drink station at a local water park.  She popped up the bright umbrella, let the beach cover fall to her feet, and waited in a tiny string bikini for business to appear which took all of about ten seconds.

If you get even one part of the transaction really, really right the other parts can be a little wobbly.

Or how about our visit to Cancun where we mostly window shopped until hearing the world’s
best-worst pitch:  “Senor?  Help me get rid of this s_ _ _.” (Sanitized for your protection!)

Here’s what I wonder: How many sales are lost simply because the pitch wasn’t right? (Or never made!)

I see a great pitch as a three part process: hook, deal, and close. You can combine these three elements any way you want but all of them will be present in almost every successful transaction. If you want to see this process done by a pro, forget retailers and go to the masters, the carnies who operate the “stick joints” that line the midway at the county fair. Carnies have but split seconds to say or do something to grab your attention. ‘Think you’re that good?

(The following is excerpted from Borrowed Dreams.)

Think about it. A carnie must in an instant size you up and say something that will grab your attention, buy a little time, and allow him to set the hook.

Take all of your media budget and training programs. Compress them into three seconds and you begin to get a picture of what the carnie does instinctively. Take all of your focus groups and psychographic surveys and stuff them into a twelve-by-twelve booth with a colored awning and see how they would stack up against a carnie with a polished pitch.

If I have to give a name to what they do to make you look, I’d probably call it situational selling, although used car salesmen use a more colorful term, cold spearing. In a milli¬second, the experienced carnie sizes up the mark and creates a one-of-a-kind sales pitch.

Bone tired, I shuffled past the joints that should have been closed but were still milking marks for one last dollar. Two young women at the end of the last row of joints were comparing notes when I stopped to shoot the bull.

Their game was simple; pop two balloons with two darts and win a rather odd-looking hat that resembled something Dr. Seuss used to crown characters in Cat in a Hat (If you had kids, you’ll remember that one! The ‘prize’ was a gaudy, goofy hat that no one would want in the morning. Tall and floppy, made of plush something or the other, a stovepipe hat of garishly col¬ored rings. The customers loved them.

“So, give me your best pitch,” I asked.

“Easy….Hey, Bud! I can get you a better hat than that!” She snickered and pointed at my gimme cap, squatting low, mouth half-covered to make the mockery more dramatic.

A piece of cake. One quick glance and grab onto some¬thing, anything that you can use to personalize the pitch. Dr. Frazier Crane should be so astute.

Down the way, a rather earthy-looking carnie was wowing stragglers with a challenge to break beer bottles with a baseball. Everyone wants to break glass and here is this guy giving you permission… daring you, to do it in public, all you have to do is throw a baseball at a row of beer bottles (professionally emptied) stuck neck down in a two-by-six. One of the “marks” my grandmother would have described as a “tall drink of water” who was accompanied by a woman ten years his senior I would grudgingly describe as “pudgy in a too-short skirt.” They didn’t stand a chance.

“Win this for your little lady! Bet you can’t do it! Hey! Even girls can do this one!” (End of excerpt.)

Okay, not the best hook but it served the moment…customer’s attention focused, ready for the deal. Still, the carnie with the beer bottle bashing booth was smooth. And notice that the deal does not have to mention price, just terms. This last deal was simply, “Win this for your little lady.” And the close?  “Bet you can’t do it! Hey! Even girls can do this one!”

As if to prove he had mastered the art, the carnie added, “Wait! I’ll get you started.” With that he knocked off the top bottle and placed the two baseballs into the hands of the mark.

There is more, much more to be said about how to construct your “pitch.” For now think about all the opportunities we have to pitch our products, our services, our ideas. And think how you might use hook, deal, and close to crank up sales. Hey! Even girls can do this one!

If you have a sample pitch you are willing to share, please send it to me at Scott@TScottGross.com

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