How To Sell A Hole In The Ground... With Water in It
I sat in the conference room with no idea who the client was, what they did, or why it was necessary to pull me in on a first meeting with them.
The sales rep, Steve, and I had a long relationship, and we had built a relationship of mutual respect and trust, so if he asked me to be in a meeting, he knew I wouldn’t say no.
I’m A Pool Builder
When the client finally arrived, I knew how this meeting was going to go. In my head it went like this:
Client: "Spanky, I build a backyard oasis, a vacation spot, a dream pool.”
You see, until that moment, every pool builder was competing for a slice of the same market, people who built a house and wanted a pool, an oasis, a vacation spot. This pool builder was different, and their product was more than a hole in the ground with water in it.
They discovered a niche market and went all in on this tiny segment. Correction: They went all in on this huge but petite segment.
Postage-Stamp-Sized Yards
Real estate developers use every inch of land available for home development. During a housing boom, this means lots get smaller, homes are built closer together, and big suburban backyards become postage-stamp-sized, leaving little to no room for a pool. So if you were one of the buyers during a boom market, chances are you had a patch of yard that was fairly useless.
Enter The Diminutive Hero
The client was excited, his energy palpable. Spanky, he said, we are the ONLY pool builder in the market that specializes in tiny or petite pools.
Finally, a non-commodity. At this moment, Steve looked across the conference room table, smiling like the Cheshire cat. He knew I was in, and now I knew why he wanted me in this first meeting. He wanted this new client to give me a direct creative brief, unfiltered, without any chance of misinterpretation.
As I write this article, I am fondly reliving that meeting as if it were yesterday. I still get all the feelings, and the hair on the back of my head stands up when I think about it.
When the meeting wrapped up, Steve and I had a debrief session back in The Cave. For clarity, The Cave isn’t some exotic bar; it’s what the staff called my office. I kept my office overhead lights off, had accent lamps that barely lit the space, scented candles, and I guess, to them—it was cave-like.
Steve knew he could sign this client for an annual agreement if I could develop a campaign that hit a home run on the first pitch.
Developing A Different Idea
Until that meeting, I held a belief that ALL pool builders sold the same thing. Essentially they do. The problem is they had no way to differentiate themselves from the market, and there was nothing unique about them.
La Petite Pools was different. Sure, they still sold pools, but they specialized in a niche market, a growing market, a blue ocean of homeowners with tiny backyards and the desire to have a pool with no place to build it.
As I sat in The Cave, alone in my thoughts, I imagined this family of overindulgent Americans. They blew money on all the things, had all the stuff, and lived the American dream. The one thing they didn’t have was a backyard that was usable for anything. My notepad came out, and the words started to flow.
The First Pitch Becomes A Home Run
About a week later, I’d developed a series of ads for this potential campaign, an annual deal if the client liked it, and we called the client back for a second meeting.
I walked in confidently and shook the client’s hand. He was excited, anticipating the campaign ideas I’d come up with. I said good morning and not another word before I started the pitch. My pitch wasn’t actually a pitch at all. Instead, I’d decided to cut the first of the sixty-second ads for the campaign and played it for him.
Here’s what he heard.
I know, sixty-seconds seems like an eternity today, right?
When creating a new advertisment for ANY product or service, you must always look for the HOW. What do I mean by this?
HOW does this product or service differentiate itself from the competition?
HOW does this product or service serve the marketplace in a different, new, or unique way?
HOW does this product or service stand out from the crowd?
Once you’ve figured out the HOW, it’s time to move on to the WHAT.
WHAT feature should we focus on?
WHAT benefit do we highlight?
WHAT is unique about this product or service?
At this point in the process, you should pick the thing with the most significant impact on the market. This has been my approach for nearly four decades in advertising. When I find that thing, I accentuate the hell out of it, so the message is clear.
In the case of La Petite Pools, I created a pretend family representing America, the Biggs family. They not only live the American dream but are also the typical suburban family with 2.5 children, a dog, and a McMansion. They love their home and wanted a pool, but how could they add a pool to a yard so tiny you can’t even hoola hoop?
OK, that was an exaggeration in the ad to help sell the size of the yard, thus focusing on the thing La Petite Pools offered, petite pools for postage-stamp-sized backyards.
When you listen to the ad, you are drawn in by the commonality of the characters, the reliability of their situation, and the one thing they wanted—a pool that fit in their small backyard.