What I Learned From “Pitchmen”

Who remembers the TV show “Pitchmen”?

In case you never got a chance to see it, “Pitchmen” was a reality TV show on the Discovery Channel, and was produced much in the same vein as Discovery’s other blockbuster reality shows – Deadliest Catch, Mythbusters, and Dirty Jobs.

Basically, “Pitchmen” followed around two of direct response / infomercial’s biggest names – the late Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan. The show would chronicle Billy and Anthony seeking out products to pitch, folks pitching products them to possibly be produce/advertised/distributed by Telebrands (the “As Seen on TV” guys), and even the shooting of commercials.

The show ran one season before Mays tragically died in June 2009. A second season was planned, and the first episode even aired before Discovery yanked it from their lineup. (Does anybody know why, BTW?) Wikipedia said that the un-aired episodes were supposed to show starting back in Jan-2011, but I don’t think they ever did.

(On a side note, anybody have vids of the first season or know where to download them? Hit me up if you do.)

Anyway, I thought the show was fun as hell to watch. While the whole ‘reality’ bit (you know, with the drama, and comedy, and junk) was certainly entertaining enough, it was getting a sort of ‘sneak peak’ into at least some of what goes on in the big-time direct response advertising industry that I thought was so damn cool.

As an internet marketer, you could see how they’d go through decision-making processes if a product was viable to invest advertising dollars in, what kinda demographics it had, and many of the other kinds of things we IMers do everyday. Of course, it was on a totally different level, but the same basic principles were there.

And being the guy that’s always trying to learn something (this is how I am with anything I’m interested in), I tried to always keep an eye out for anything that I thought I could somehow tweak and apply to my own business.

One of the biggest things I learned from watching “Pitchmen” was watching people pitch their stuff to AJ Khubani – the head honcho over at Telebrands. AJ – being a guy that was always worried about the bottom line – had a real knack for being able to tell right off if something was even feasible to try and promote.

But one of the things that AJ basically alluded to one time really stuck with me. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it was something he basically kinda inferred. And as I thought about it over the next few days to a week, it made so much damn sense. It was one of those “duh” moments where you shoulda known it all along, but once it became clear, you almost feel like you had this massive catharsis.

(‘catharsis’ = SAT word of the day. LOL )

Basically, it goes like this…

AJ would be sitting there with Billy and/or Sully (Anthony’s nickname) while the nervous regular joe would pitch their product and have a literal few minutes to ‘wow’ AJ enough into putting $$ into it, getting Sully and/or Billy to pitch it, and put commercials up everywhere about it.

AJ would be looking for a few things, but the long and the short of it is this – can you take a potential customer (i.e. – random schmuck watching TV), and take them on a trip from “I didn’t know this product even existed” to “HOLY COW I GOTTA HAVE THAT NOW” whilst they grab their credit card and reach for the phone.

Now, all the product stuff aside – does the product fulfill a need, would this be a luxury item, is it easily demonstrable, etc – it was the pitching side that I found so enlightening.

One of the things that AJ was always adamant about was that a product couldn’t ever really sell for more than $20. Why? Because the majority of the time, you just weren’t gonna be able to convince somebody to drop more than $20 buck on *any* product in a 30-second time spot (commercial).

When stuff got more expensive, that’s when you started getting up into infomercial territory. You can sell a really trick power saw with two blades for $150 (or whatever it was) because you had 30 minutes to pitch people. Same as with any other expensive TV item. Thing about it – when was the last time you saw a 30-mins infomercial for a $19.95 product?

Ain’t gonna happen.

While all that made sense, my ‘light bulb’ moment came when I went in reverse with it.

If you only have 30 seconds to sell somebody, and that means that you shouldn’t try to charge more than twenty bones, then if you’re trying to pitch something for $20, then you should be trying to sell them inside of 30 seconds.

(Well, not necessarily in just 30 seconds, but you get my point.)

You’ve got a lot of people out there that are huge believers in long-form sales letters, giving away a ton of free information, a load of freebies, a 493-part follow-up autoresponder sequence, etc. And all that’s fine – as long as your product warrants it.

If (insert big name IM guru here) is trying to launch his newest $2k product, then he’d damn well better have one helluva sales process. There better be 3-4 videos (all at least 15-20+ minutes) packed with solid, useful, free info, a badass sales letter or video, emails, a slick website…even getting group of midgets straight out of Oz to single a fancy jingle about your product wouldn’t be *too* out of line.

But tell me this – do you really need 5000 words of sales copy if you’re trying to sell a $17 ebook?

Personally, I don’t think so.

In fact, I think if you’ve got a lower-priced product, having too much pitch (be it your sales letter, your video, your freebies in your email, etc) is actually detrimental to your sales process. Because let’s face it – unless you just REALLY suck at making a pitch, if you’ve got a product priced at under $20, and you don’t get somebody to click the ‘Add to Cart’ button in pretty short order, it’s a safe bet that person either just don’t want what you’re selling, or is a freebie-seeker that ain’t ever gonna buy anyway. So don’t waste your time on them.

Instead, take that time you’d put into a huge pitch campaign, and put it into attracting better and more qualified traffic to your pitch.

It’ll be time much better spent.

Tags: add to cart, anthony sullivan, billy mays, discovery channel, freebie seeker, pitchmen