Emi Gal » apple

Selling by storytelling, the Steve Jobs way

Emi Gal — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 09:45:34 +0000

The other day, I discovered an interview with Steve Jobs from exactly 26 years ago. Yes, 26 years ago. He was 29, and Apple had just launched the $3,000 Mac. The interview itself is superb and I strongly recommend you read the whole thing, but what really struck me is how well he prepared his stories, even back then. Here are a few of examples:

About the computer:

Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this cafe [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until it is horizontal. Extend left foot and shift weight 300 centimeters forward .” and on and on. If you could interpret all those instructions 100 times faster than any other person in this cafe, you would appear to be a magician: You could run over and grab a milk shake and bring it back and set it on the table and snap your fingers, and I’d think you made the milk shake appear, because it was so fast relative to my perception. That’s exactly what a computer does. It takes these very, very simple-minded instructions–”Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number”–but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.

About the mouse:

If I want to tell you there is a spot on your shirt, I’m not going to do it linguistically: “There’s a spot on your shirt 14 centimeters down from the collar and three centimeters to the left of your button.” If you have a spot–”There!” [He points]–I’ll point to it. Pointing is a metaphor we all know. We’ve done a lot of studies and tests on that, and it’s much faster to do all kinds of functions, such as cutting and pasting, with a mouse, so it’s not only easier to use but more efficient.

About life:

There’s an old Hindu saying that comes into my mind occasionally: “For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.” As I’m going to be 30 in February, the thought has crossed my mind.

Selling is all about telling a story that’s relevant to the person you’re telling it to, but at the same time creates an emotional impact or connection. If you look closely at the paragraphs above, you’ll notice that the stories involve the interviewer directly. It may not make the person buy whatever you’re selling directly, but it might make people pay more attention to whatever your saying.

Dear IBM, I think I know why Apple’s been eating your lunch

Emi Gal — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:09:19 +0000

IBM builds great products. My dad uses an IBM which came out, I think, in 2003. IBM’s products are robust, reliable, work well and never crash. Yes, the person who designs their products should be fired (and shot) for making such horrible devices, but the products are some of the most reliable on the market. How is it, then, one might ask, that AAPL grew 4331% in the past 10 years, where as IBM has only grown 73.51% (Yes, this is a few orders of magnitude less)?

A couple of our developers at Brainient are IBM fans. So, a couple of weeks ago, I ordered a brand new Lenovo laptop. The Lenovo website wouldn’t tell me how long it’s going to take to have it delivered, but I wasn’t in a rush. A few hours later, I got an email saying that the product will be delivered in about 2 weeks. That sounded ridiculous, but hey, maybe they keep their stock in China or whatever. No problem.

However, the other day a courier dropped by and delivered the laptop. Right after the delivery, I got an email from Lenovo, with an .XLS file attached, saying that if I want to benefit from the warranty I need to fill in the product’s serial number and a bunch of other details and send it back to them. Like, say what?

I wrote a post a few days ago stating that Great products DON’T sell themselves. Well, dear IBM, great products don’t offer AWESOME customer service either. And in a world where I can walk into any Apple Store with my faulty MacBook, without a receipt or any other document, and walk out with a brand new one, I think you’re missing out big time. A few million customers and many orders of magnitude in market cap growth, that is.

Later edit: A couple of you pointed out that Lenovo is actually a company that acquired IBM’s PC division in 2005. Sorry about that, I guess I should be doing my homework a bit better before I blog. The thinking behind the post, however, I think, still stands .

Why there’s no Flash on the iPad. And why there won’t be any. Ever.

Emi Gal — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:02:34 +0000

Here’s how the story goes: many, many years ago there was this really cool video editing tool called Adobe After Effects. At the same time there was this really, really cool operating system called Mac OS X. All good.

The only problem: After Effects didn’t work on OS X, so Mr. Stevie Jobs went to Mr. Adobe CEO and said: Dude, c’mon, make it work. And Mr. Adobe CEO said: neah, you only sell a few thousand computers per year, it’s not worth it. So Stevie went on and built Final Cut and promised Adobe’s CEO that he’ll make it back.

Therefore, no flash on the iPhone, no flash on the iPad, no flash-on-any-freaking-beautiful-device-ever-built-by-Apple. Ever.

And that’s how the story goes .