Nobody Wants to Dance with the Wallflowers

You have to create the right product and the right perception to market your invention effectively.

“It is said that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. But you can put some salt in his oats.” – George Godfrey.

After the last 20-plus years of living on both sides of the fence between product development and marketing, I had some validation recently from Malcolm Gladwell’s book “What the Dog Saw”. In it, he described his interview with Ron Popiel, an inventor and marketer who by himself conceived, created, and sold, among other things, the Showtime rotisserie oven to millions on TV. Now if you think Ron Popiel and only envision a campy pitchman on late-night infomercials, you may want to think again. In the last 40 years his products have pulled in over $2 Billion in sales (Yes, B as in Billion). One of the things that struck me in Gladwell’s book was the statement that the Popiel family believed it was a mistake to separate product development from marketing. “Developing and marketing a product are like left and right feet,” says Popeil. “They both have to work for the product to succeed.” In his mind, the product that sold best was the one that sold itself. And in his infomercials, his marketing effort completed the walk all the way into the consumers’ kitchens.

So much of bringing an invention to market successfully is building on the right foundation, a solid foundation that you can hold firmly to when you go to market. And so many of the important steps successful inventors take early on are an integral part of the later ones. What I’m saying here is that you need to have done your homework before you go to market. And by homework I mean researching and making sure the invention you’re about to invest your time and money into has a good chance of success. You need to pick the lowest hanging fruit of both an invention that has a high degree of success and one that you are able to execute. You must have a clear understanding of your marketplace and an even clearer, concise plan about how you’re going to enter that marketplace. You must remember that the inventor serves the consumer. And you do that by proving to yourself that you know what they really want – not just what you think they might want – and be able to deliver it in a way that they’ll want to buy into. And sometimes that means modifying or even completely changing your idea along the way.

I believe that one of the best ways to get kick started into a market, even if your ultimate goal is licensing or selling to a large company, is to be able to cheaply produce a small number of the product and get it into that market, especially if you can find a niche market to start with (this is why first choosing the right invention that you can tackle and bring to market is so important). This is your foothold, your Normandy, your beachhead. Once you can gain that foothold, something amazing begins to happen. When you actually begin to sell products and money begins to change hands, you have made your invention a real product that is selling. This can have a powerful effect on you, your invention and even the market itself. Potential distributors or licensees that would not give you the time of day back when you had an idea on a napkin or in a frankentype are now suddenly sitting up and taking notice.

Even if marketing is not what you have done before, you can learn to do it, just like any skill, and I believe it is a great skill to acquire. Everyone is bad at something until they learn how to do it, and then practice it enough. If, on the other hand you absolutely do not want to go there, I highly urge you to do two things: learn everything about marketing that you can anyway, and then hire or partner with someone who is good at marketing. But remember, you can’t communicate with the natives until you learn their language. So unless you learn everything you can about marketing, any hired or partnered relationship can and will typically end badly due to miscommunication.

So the auditorium is full, and the band is beginning to play. Now it’s time to decide if you’re going to stand along the wall or get out there and dance.