The Pirate Who Sales for Cleaner Opportunities

Me as the Cleaning Pirate for Simply Right

January - April 2008.

My College experience provided me many opportunities to explore my creative side. While in college, I worked at KWCR radio station and ran a live local music show.  The show lead me to Producing and hosting a live TV show. Filmed several sporting events, short films and music videos. Wrote several short stories. College was a creative time. No other time in my life was I able to freely create.

Now as a Creative Marketer I’ve worked my way into a position allowing me to explore new create ways to sell a product most would consider "a hard sale.” There's no product, it's a service. No textile object to push onto the open market place. How do you sell a service?

First the Marketer needs understand the the service. Thanks to several years of working part-time for a cleaning service company I was able to work an many departments. In fact my first job was at 18 years old was scrapping gum in dumpy movie theater in the middle of nowhere USA. It took me three nights to clean the gum. It was hard labor. It gave me a “the boots on ground” training for what a cleaning service provider goes through. I told myself it was “just a job.” Now I know thinking of my work as “just of a Job” hurt my job satisfaction.

Jump ahead, and I’m in college being all creative and such, I still have a part-time job at Simply Right making customer service calls. I hated calling the customers because I was uncomfortable with what they might say on the phone. The irony was at night I would host a live radio show were I interviewed musicians. However during the same afternoon I was afraid of making customer service calls.

The acting CMO, Danny, noticed my talents and started having me help on projects. Well, Danny decided it was time to change our sells approach at our biggest sales event of the year – CinemaCon. He had the brilliance to understand that our “Product” was people. We provide the service of people, thus giving us a freedom to advertise in any direction. 2008 was the first year a theme was created for the booth. Danny designed a booth to look like a pirate ship with treasure chests and images of pirates. The working title for the booth was Cleaning the Deck 9or Keeping the Deck Clean; I don’t remember)

Danny pulled together several of the younger office workers at Simply Right to be the models for pirate photos he wanted to use for print advertising. I became the “Hero Pirate” due to my experience with production. I was the only one to really fit the mold of a pirate. I also agreed to let the photographer put eye liner on because they felt it helped my character “come alive.” During the shoot there was a supply of cleaning equipment. Danny had me switch cleaning equipment for different action shots, from spray bottles to backpack vacuums. After the shoot it seemed like my role was done.

Two months later Danny calls me while I at the campus.

“Hey man, how do you feel about coming with us to Las Vegas to be a Pirate?”

After agreeing to the job, Danny explained what was required of me. I would dress as a pirate walk around the trade show floor handing out keys to the guest. The keys would get the guest a chance to win a prize. We had a treasure chest at the booth and only a few keys worked to open the chest. Inside the chest was chocolate coins and a pair of skull candy headphones.

The whole experience of walking and talking to people at the trade show was fun. The interactions, the reactions and the photos was positive. This was on-hands training of what is needed for running a trade show booth. People want to have a good time. People want to feel special. 70% of client’s decision to buy into a service/product is based on how they feel about the person who’s selling it. If you can give the customer a positive experience with your company the odds of them using your services in the future increase greatly.

After seven years with Simply Right I've been involved in over 25 trade shows. With each show I try to get better at the process, improve my interactions with the guests and how can I make it fun.