A clever metaphor?

The story of Green Eggs and Ham was written because Dr Seuss’s editor, Bennett Cerf, bet Dr Seuss that he could not write a book using only fifty words.

And the result of the bet is that we have that wonderfully illustrated children’s book, which is also, according to Publisher’s Weekly, the fourth most successful English language children’s book of all time.

The author Dr Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel, had another life: that of an advertising agency copywriter and designer.

And the Green Eggs and Ham story was also the cleverest metaphor for the advertising and sales process. You sold a product to a person everywhere – on the radio, on the TV, on a train, by a bus stop in the rain. And then, sooner or later, the person, worn down, would buy it, even if it was something as obviously inedible as green eggs and ham.

Green eggs are of course very rotten eggs. But in the modern context, they are organically produced, via free range chickens that get to see the sky. The modern “green ham” might not be ham at all, but something new that we, the tofu eating wokerati, might enjoy... for example something entirely vegetable protein based.

Either way, the advertising agent, the salesman, and indeed the PR copy writer, has a job to do:

Sell that product! 

For the salesman it is also like the “Sam I am” journey: hitting the telephones, breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings, email, CRM, and webinars etc. And indeed, the salesman gets the support of the marketing team organising industry conferences, events, more webinars, and quantities of gifts of gadgets and gizmos, alongside the PR team getting the word out in the trade and national press.

But a key part of the sales journey is the movement to trust. To familiarity. To being the accepted brand. There is the trust from an integrity perspective that needs to be gained, and indeed, there is a need for cultural match: most companies will not do business with another unless it shares the same values.

But the sales journey is only part of the story. The other part of the story is the buyer experience – what was it going on in Sam’s target customer’s head when he finally decided to buy the Green Eggs and Ham? The procurement policy, and purchase criteria, were obviously not relevant in this case, it was an emotional decision, something had triggered. Was indeed the poor random person worn down by the zany salesmanship, blinded by the science, or even brain-washed by the new best friend “Sam I Am”.

All of the above, perhaps, contributes to getting a new customer.

But the final point of the story, is that, in fact, the Green Eggs and Ham tastes good. It does what it is supposed to. And this is what the customer wants. And often, both from the customer and the seller perspective, the question is why is that journey so ludicrously difficult?! Again, thinking back to the wonderful travels of Sam and his target customer.

But the Green Eggs and Ham went one step further, they were not just edible, they were excellent!

And, getting to the point of this post – if Sam had had managed to explain that point at the beginning, he would not have wasted the train ticket, got soaked in the rain, would probably have got to have sold more Green Eggs and Ham, and got a bigger bonus at the end of the month!

For the tech space, where the complexity of offering is something else, the need for clear communication of what it is that makes a particular service or offering different or better is key. 

hifo.co crosses the boundaries of advertising, marketing, sales and PR – but the key difference is that a subscribing company to hifo articulates (within 200 characters, instead of fifty words) for each offering or service, how they do it differently or better. So a customer can immediately understand – and effectively shorten the sales journey. 

The first part of hifo is to create that full list – so the buyer gets the full menu of companies and offerings to choose from.

If your company is not on hifo.co, please list it. If the offering you want is not listed, it is easy to request.

Then the second part of hifo is to cut down on the sales chatter, and just get to the facts. A beautiful children’s story might not be told – but a sale is more quickly made, the right supplier is found, and importantly a better and stronger journey between supplier and client begins.