SXSW has some funny traditions. One of the chief ones is not selling while you're there. It's strange, because not looking for leads at a trade conference is a bit like not picking up women at a bar (hint: those who don't try never succeed at it). From what I could see, the ethos of sharing and smiling and not bringing any revenue to your company with a direct pitch is alive and well. Like the early days of blogs when making money was considered beneath us, SXSW is all about spending money without asking for anything in return.
We even have a fun name for it. People who market at SXSW are douchebags. There was even a whole panel devoted to it. Being a douchebag covers all manners of sin, including looking at someone's badge to see where they work, spending too much as a company instead of participating in engagement, and even trying to get into a cool party or checking in too much on Foursquare. Also, don't introduce yourself to people you don't know. That whole meeting turning online contacts into real world contacts? That's out of line, buddy!
And no matter what. Don't even think about discussing how your services or product can improve a prospect's working situation. That's for douchebags.
Ha ha ha! See, selling is for losers! Just like being cool enough to have women fawn over you is better than having to come up with a lame line to get attention, so is being awesome enough to have people throw money at you instead of trying to do icky things like picking up the phone and cold-calling or making pitches to people you don't know well. What's wrong with those people? Don't they know that selling is so 1995?
That's actually the pitch, and it is supposed to represent the new way to make money. Show up, make friends, and only work with the most awesome companies that see the value of what you're selling, I mean offering for free, and then magical VC money leads to being the next Google! Magic! Unicorns! Scott Baio!
If you want to stop any conversation short at SXSW, just ask how they plan to make money. The younger folks there will give you some version of "we lose money on every sale, but we make up for it with volume." The older ones will sheepishly admit that yes, they sell their services, usually for a pretty penny, but they just don't feel that doing it at SXSW is useful.
They're right of course. You get information at SXSW, not sales leads. The corporate folks who arrived in droves and paid several thousand dollars for the privilege weren't there to be pitched. And yet, selling still went on. I'm a recruiter, and so over the last 12 years I've learned to attend networking events and listen while I'm talking. Picking up information and working a cocktail party takes experience, and recruiters are very good at it. So despite all the warnings, selling at SXSW occurred, but it occurred under the table, accompanied with vague promises of working together, and probably forgotten the next day and never followed up on.
It's not that you don't sell at SXSW. It's that people sell poorly.
I come from a hardcore sales traditions of cold-calling to set appointments in a jaded market. Yes, the world is different than it was when I was making 125 calls a day selling vacation incentives in Florida, but in some ways it was better back them. We were honest about it. And while I hated it at the time, the skills I picked up in three years of phone sales, followed by six years of staffing, and five as a business owner still rely heavily on my first year of training. It was hard, but it had a purpose.
Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. It's a great line from GlenGarry Glen Ross, and it underscores a simple truth about business. There is no client relationship until someone signs a check.
When you do something like travel to SXSW on the company dime and you're not selling, you're spending the company money to play. If you choose not to talk about your company and seek out relationships with people who can keep the lights on, that's your right, but just don't lie to yourself that no one is paying for it.
Salespeople usually get a bad rep, because most salespeople are bad at what they do. I hear it all the time - people complain about salespeople (and recruiters, who are really just sellers of people) because they don't like to be bothered. And yet, what does a salesperson do? They ask you to come to a decision. Talk to them or don't talk to them. Listen to their pitch or do not listen to their pitch. Buy, or do not buy.
Asking someone to come to a decision isn't douchebaggery. It's the basic function of business. Covering it with social or marketing or PR and saying that inbound marketing is the new selling lacks one essential historical fact. It's always been rude to sell. Just ask rich people.
The elite have a unique way of buying and selling. You join the right clubs, wear the right clothes, go to the right schools, give to the right foundations, and when the time comes, you do business with one and another (and with their children). It's not a new way of selling, it's a very old way of selling. What we're creating at SXSW is a new elite. A group of people with a set of rules on the right and wrong way and the right and wrong time and the right and wrong people to work with. We're subconsciously doing what the uber-wealthy have always done. We're doing business based on pedigree, and not what you can do for a company.
Does that sound about right? We use social shaming and social pressure to warn people away from doing what they're paid to do - drive results for their company in a tough economy. And then we celebrate it and laugh at those who didn't get the message.
Because they're douchebags.
Of course, there's one problem with calling someone a marketing douchebag. A douchebag at the club is someone who gets hot women, but none of us can figure out why. A douchebag is someone we think is ridiculous, but something they are doing works, because they're there with the hot woman. It's so ridiculous that we take pictures and put them on websites and marvel at how they do it.
The douchebag, for all of their douchebaggery, is asking for the sale and then closing the sale. They're getting the digits. You can mock them all you want, but if you ever find yourself lacking the right pedigree (as many people find out when they leave MegaCorp to start their own business), you're going to wish you focused a little more on learning to sell, and a little less mocking those trying to do so.
Douchebags at least can't be accused of not trying.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm sure many people are going to be offended by this, and I'm not defending bad selling practices. I'm no more suggesting that hard pitches at a conference are welcome than I'm suggesting that douchebags are role models for happy hours. I'm saying that selling, good selling, is a respectable action. Discovering how to fit into a social situation and turning it into an exploration of a prospect's needs is a good thing. Asking questions, and learning new things, and expanding your mind are all good traits you can practice at SXSW without coming across as a jerk.
Knowing when someone doesn't want to hear your sales pitch is a skill good salespeople have. We sometimes forget, or charge ahead, or just get tired of pussyfooting around, but annoying someone isn't an effective sales strategy. You know what else isn't effective? Never asking for a sale.
Let's make a promise for the next SXSW and for all conferences in the future. We'll do our best to understand the atmosphere, but keep our eyes and ears open to people who want to hear from us. And when it's all said and done, we won't contribute to the public shaming of anyone trying to pay their mortgage and put food on their table for their children.
Because doing so? Yeah, it kinda makes you a douchebag. And not in a good way.
