Guy Kawasaki on selling the dream

[David Gerard]

A recent post on BoycottNovell spoke of "evangelism" in the marketing
sense as a Microsoft term:
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/15/microsoft-guerrilla-people-monsters/

It isn't - the term was popularised by Guy Kawasaki in his work at
Apple, marketing the idea of the Macintosh as a working tool.

I submit that it's highly applicable to bringing people to free software.

Kawasaki wrote a book about this, "Selling The Dream", which I highly
recommend to anyone with a cause. Popularising a cause requires
selling and marketing it. This is much nicer with a good cause that
one sincerely believes in :-)

This blog post is relevant to previous discussions on this list:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_art_of_evan.html

"As people hit the streets with this title, they need a foundation of
the fundamental principles of evangelism. Fulfilling this need is the
purpose of today's blog.

   1. Create a cause. As the previous blog called "Guy's Golden Touch"
explained, the starting point of evangelism is having a great thing to
evangelize. A cause seizes the moral high ground. It is a product or
service that improves the lives of people, ends bad things, or
perpetuates good things. It is not simply an exchange of
things/services for money.
   2. Love the cause. "Evangelist" isn't simply a job title. It's a
way of life. It means that the evangelist totally loves the product
and sees it as a way to bring the "good news." A love of the cause is
the second most important determinant of the success of an
evangelist--second only to the quality of the cause itself. No matter
how great the person, if he doesn't love the cause, he cannot be a
good evangelist for it.
   3. Look for agnostics, ignore atheists. A good evangelist can
usually tell if people understand and like a product in five minutes.
If they don't, cut your losses and avoid them. It is very hard to
convert someone to a new religion (ie, product) when he believes in
another god (ie, another product). It's much easier to convert a
person who has no proof about the goodness or badness of the
evangelist's product.
   4. Localize the pain. No matter how revolutionary your product,
don't describe it using lofty, flowery terms like "revolutionary,"
"paradigm shifting," and "curve jumping." Macintosh wasn't positioned
as the third paradigm in personal computing; instead, it increased the
productivity and creativity of one person with one computer. People
don't buy "revolutions." They buy "aspirins" to fix the pain or
"vitamins" to supplement their lives.
   5. Let people test drive the cause. Essentially, say to people, "We
think you are smart. Therefore, we aren't going to bludgeon you into
becoming our customer. Try our product, take it home, download it, and
then decide if it's right for you." A test drive is much more powerful
than an ad.
   6. Learn to give a demo. An "evangelist who cannot give a great
demo" is an oxymoron. A person simply cannot be an evangelist if she
cannot demo the product. If a person cannot give a demo that quickens
the pulse of everyone in the audience, he should stay in sales or in
marketing.
   7. Provide a safe first step. The path to adopting a cause should
have a slippery slope. There shouldn't be large barriers like
revamping the entire IT infrastructure. For example, the safe first
step to recruit an evangelist for the environment is not requiring
that she chain herself to a tree; it's to ask her to start recycling
and taking shorter showers.
   8. Ignore pedigrees. Good evangelists aren't proud. They don't
focus on the people with big titles and big reputations. Frankly,
they'll meet with, and help, anyone who "gets it" and is willing to
help them. This is much more likely to be the database administrator
or secretary than the CIO.
   9. Never tell a lie. Very simply, lying is morally and ethically
wrong. It also takes more energy because if one lies, then it is
necessary to keep track of the lies. If one always tells the truth,
then there's nothing to keep track of. Evangelists know their stuff,
so they never have to tell a lie to cover their ignorance.
  10. Remember your friends. Be nice to the people on the way up
because one is likely to see them again on the way down. Once an
evangelist has achieved success, he shouldn't think that he'll never
need those folks again.  One of the most likely people to buy a
Macintosh was an Apple II owner. One of the most likely people to buy
an iPod was a Macintosh owner. One of the most likely people to buy
whatever Apple puts out next is an iPod owner. And so it goes."


- d.