We interrupt this blog’s 5-part series about getting to “No” to bring you this special “American Idol” update:
American Idol kicked off their “Top 24″ phase tonight, and watching the ladies perform tonight got me thinking.
This is supposed to be when the contestants bust out their “A” games and show the audience what they’re made of. It didn’t happen tonight. Instead, I saw 12 girls make the same mistake made every year: instead of engaging with their audience, they picked songs they thought would make them look good. Do you smell a business lesson coming?
At this point in the competition, the audience hasn’t had much of a chance to form an opinion about the contestants. There’s no history, no relationship. We don’t know them yet. This is really our first impression; we’ve yet to hear a full performance, only snippets played between clips of their family or kids or dogs or whatever “human” element the producers thought would make for good TV.
That being the case, these folks need to make a connection and start building a relationship with us pretty quickly. The absolute best, most effective way to do that is to show the audience a good time. Yet year after year (and tonight in particular), you see contestants missing that opportunity to connect and make us like them. Instead, they go for the close with a vocally challenging song and end up falling flat.
Look: unless you have a truly, truly amazing voice, singing a Leona Lewis or Ann Wilson or Stevie Nicks song is suicide at this point. To quote Simon, the performances are “forgettable” at best and “horrible” at their worst. They’d be much more memorable if the performer would just pick a song they were comfortable singing, one that’s in the right range for their voice, and have some fun with it.
So here’s the business application: if you’re going to make a memorable first impression on a sales call, think fun. Don’t try to impress a new prospect with how smart you are by regurgitating every last detail about your product and going for a premature close. Prospects hate that, and it makes you look like every other poser that’s shown up in their office in the past five years. You’re “forgettable”.
On the other hand, if you show the prospect a good time by engaging her in a lively conversation that puts the spotlight on her and the needs of her organization, you’ll probably survive to the next appointment. Be interesting. Be fun. Hell, be OUTRAGEOUS…if nothing else, at least she’ll remember you!
And my predictions for the ladies this week? Sorry Janell and Lacey, but I think it might be time to pack your bags.
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We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog series “5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In sales”.
Another Business Lesson Courtesy of American Idol | The Motivation 101 Blog…
Are your sales calls forgettable, or do your customers really, really like you? If you’ll learn this sales lesson from American Idol, you can be memorable….
Scott Berkun was writing this week about being good instead of innovating. His point was the same: some days, ‘changing the world’ means just getting the job done right for a change, not pulling out some game-changing triumph.
[...] off, I’d just like to acknowledge that my American Idol predictions last week (here and here) were a bit off. No worries, though…a 25% closing ration isn’t bad! Tune [...]