I believe we have a responsibility to expend equal creative energy, if needed, to bring our ideas to the market. I call this Creative Entrepreneurism.
The word “selling” can negatively remind us of gimmicks and sales manipulation. How about we reframe it as: “Effectively communicating about what you have created so others are more able to understand its value and buy it?
Those whose support we need may have different perceptions than ours. Promotors, marketing executives, financial investors and, yes, the gatekeepers who are just plain incompetent.
Market analysts have told me consumers crave novelty. The problem with selling a creation or invention that’s truly novel is it can scare the crap out of a lot of sales executives. There are no benchmarks to measure the risk. It is far easier to sell last year’s hit dressed up with the word NEW slapped on it and claim it’s what the buyer/audience wants.
Apple does the opposite. They invent new products to replace successful old ones before the latter run out of steam. And Apple is frequently pilloried by the so-called experts. Speaking on the introduction of the iPhone, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer prophesied: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”
Be diplomatic with decision makers. Make clear the value and abilities of what you originated is a winning strategy. Help your potential allies with mile markers and freeways signs. At Trilogy, we enthroned this process as: “Building a bridge backwards.” Or, to put it more impolitely, “Asshole proofing.”
Use psychology. Explain your vision with reference to significant successes that they understand and value. For example, I pitch movies that way. “This story combines the box office potential of Alien and The Exorcist. A priest is flown to a moon-base because NASA has found the devil’s bones up there!” Our goal is to gain incentivized and informed supporters in our quest.
Maintain a dialogue with your enterprise collaborators and financiers. Have patience and avoid anger. Anger only entrenches both parties. Interpret what “they say” to the best of your skills. Sometimes there are good points hidden in subtexts. Share your problems—it can define you as empathetic and trustworthy.
I once took a sales training course sponsored by Kodak, and I still remind myself to use a major technique I learned in the course: “Eliminate the objections.” Dig for them, answer to your buyer’s satisfaction, then dig for more. People tend to hold back their biggest, most personal reasons for making a rejection. When we have built trust by being reasonable, those final, most suppressed doubts and objections will usually be revealed. Often small insightful changes accomplish their needs and ours.
And when the objections are answered, the only thing left is to buy.
I overcame major objections at MGM to financing Moll Flanders, a film I wrote and eventually directed, by gentle persistence and reframing areas of my spec script to overcome the objections. And then I begged for a second read.
Want a tip on how to get the most from a creative person?
Don’t tell them what to do. You short-circuit what you might gain. Define your need and ask them to help achieve it by using their imaginations.
Emissaries, Ambassadors and Evangelists
When we aim to land an agent, manager, a salesperson, choose the honorable to represent you. Humans buy from people they like and can trust. Deception is a short-term ticket to oblivion. Morality is part of selling yourself and your creations. It will be worth it.
You don’t want a hard-core car salesman. They are too likely to abandon you as soon as they see resistance to a sale. Seek an all-weather friend. A philosophical fan of your work you can talk to. And who will be there when times are tough.
In the most subtle and diplomatic of ways, sell your “sellers” on the passion you have and the values of your work. But be sure to listen in return. We need the information and instincts of our salespeople who are experienced in the buyer’s ecosystem. They can give us realistic appraisals of how our product will fit the market. What we should fight for and what to give up in order to give our work it best chance to thrive.
Spend heartfelt time with the people who support your sales heads. Assistants are there daily and observe all, but they’re seldom given the respect they deserve. They have knowledge of the market and their bosses moods and availability. Many are on a growth track and may be fantastic allies. Taking a sincere interest in their lives and goals can be fulfilling and instrumental in building a team.
Holding Yourself Back Is 100 Percent Self-Created Failure
What do you yearn for in your life? Are you aiming at it? The Huffington Post recently ran an article on the top regrets of the dying. Their message can give people like us comfort. Faced with the end of their path, they reflected and wished they had the courage to be their true selves. They wished they hadn’t worked so hard, that they had the courage to express their feelings and had let themselves be happier. These are choices.
I am sure I am one of the pinnacle achievers of procrastination. In fact, I feel like I put the “pro” into the word! Looking back, my “errors of omission” are my greatest mistakes. Where I allowed doubt to make me a coward. Where I let my fear, vanity and lack of faith in myself hold me back, it cost me more pain and self-retribution than my “errors of commission”—that is, when I tried to create or sell something that caused myself occasional embarrassment.
I do let my passion loose and push my work—once in a while I pull off amazing feats. I went back to Les Moonves, the head of CBS four separate times over a period of years, before I got his permission to revive a show I adored, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. By number four, I felt more like a giant idiot than an emissary. But I was still excited enough to find a way to ask one last time. Les had taken over the UPN network, and I suggested Twilight Zone as a companion show to Star Trek. I was writing the pilot within days.
Every attempt to create is a roll of the cosmic dice. Sometimes, it is just quantum mechanics screwing us up. Yep. Science says success is random. It rolls around chaotically. But luck comes best to the prepared.
And if it doesn’t come? Frankly, I always worry that too many of us fail to realize we must enjoy the journey, not judge our success by an end result that is often in the hands others. Not everything sells. But every attempt teaches you.
Barry Mann and his wife, Cynthia Weil, said they had written many songs that never sold. But felt they needed to have written them to evolve the ones that did become timeless standards like, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” the song that BMI said was played more times than any other in the twentieth century.
Reportedly, when Mann and Weil sang this for The Righteous Brothers, low-voiced Bill Medley loved it but Bobby Hatfield was puzzled. He asked, “What do I do while he’s singing the entire first verse?” Phil Spector, who was there, replied, “You can go directly to the bank.”
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
- Chinese Proverb
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