In 1987, 29-year old entrepreneur Jerry Kaplan had the opportunity to pitch his idea for a new generation of personal computers that were small enough to fit on a person’s lap. He was pitching to one of the most prestigious firms in Silicon Valley at the time-Kleiner Perkins. Kaplan was nervous and had never presented to a venture capitalist before. The future of his idea depended on his ability to get funding.
When he arrived at the meeting room in his sport jacket and open-collared shirt, another entrepreneur was finishing up his presentation. The other entrepreneur, who was wearing a dark suit and red tie, was pointing to a full-color graph he had projected on the wall. Kaplan realized that what he thought was an informal session was actually expected to be a formal presentation, and he was armed only with a maroon portfolio with a pad of paper inside. He had no business plan with him, no presentation at all. Kaplan began to panic as the audience of the company’s partners began asking a myriad of difficult questions to the impressive entrepreneur.
When it was Kaplan’s turn to present, he jumped into what he had to say, quickly covering his idea: a personal computer more like a notebook than a typewriter that would serve the needs of busy professionals away from their desks. Kaplan recounts his audience’s response:
My audience seemed tense. I couldn’t tell whether they were annoyed by my lack of preparation or merely concentrating on what I was saying. . . . . Thinking I had already blown it, and therefore had little to lose, I decided to risk some theatrics.
“If I were carrying a portable PC right now, you would sure as hell know it. You probably didn’t realize that I am holding a model of the future of computing right here in my hands.”
I tossed my maroon leather case in the air. It sailed to the center of the table where it landed with a loud clap.
“Gentlemen, here is a model of the next step in the computer revolution.”
For a moment, I thought this final act of drama might get me thrown out of the room. They were sitting in stunned silence, staring at my plain leather folder-which lay motionless on the table-as though it were suddenly going to come to life. Brook Byers, the youthful-looking but long-time partner in the firm, slowly reached out and touched the portfolio as if it were some sort of talisman. He asked the first question.
“Just how much information could you store in something like this?”
John Doerr answered before I could respond. “It doesn’t matter. Memory chips are getting smaller and cheaper each year and the capacity will probably double for the same size and price annually.”
Kaplan said that he did not even need to speak much after that, as the partners debated the challenges and exchanged ideas for the new technology. He said that periodically, someone would reach out and touch his maroon portfolio, which still lay on the table.
A few days later, Kaplan got a call from Kleiner Perkins with the news that the partners had decided to back his idea. Their investment valued Kaplan’s new idea at $ 4.5 million.
This story illustrates the power of concreteness. While graphs and charts and abstract concepts may be helpful to a group of experts who already understand an idea, they do not serve well to take a person from little or no knowledge of a concept to understanding.
In Kaplan’s case, the portfolio served as a way for the partners to visualize the new technology and it gave them a creative way to brainstorm and focus their thoughts.
Concreteness is effective because it takes things we already understand and uses those things as a foundation to help us understand something more complex.
Here’s how you can apply the principle of concreteness to your marketing messages:
1. Realize that your customers don’t know as much as you do about your products or services. They need you to help them understand how your products can help them by illustrating a problem they’re experiencing and helping them to visualize how they can get it solved with your products or services.
2. Realize that your customers don’t understand your industry’s jargon. It happens in the web industry all the time. Web companies start talking to customers about PHP and ASP, CSS and HTML, search engine optimization, captchas, favicons, and ROI. Our customers need someone to talk to them in language they understand. Your customers need that too.
3. Use pictures. The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true. And pictures don’t even have to be photographs or illustrations. They can be stories that help the customer visualize pictures in their mind-like the story of Jerry Kaplan.
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