Wednesday, August 26, 2009

A K.I.S.S. for Wyden-Bennett
ObamaCare Sales 101 - Lesson #4

UPDATED: 03-Sep-09
Something has been bothering me. A few days ago, in a long post I touted my skills as a software sales professional and offered the President 3 remedial lessons in sales. He obviously needed help with his health care pitch. E.D. Kain linked to the post, called it a "good idea" (thanks!), quoted the most salient paragraph, and posted it under the title "Keep it simple, stupid".

Here is the problem - K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) is a fundamental principle of a good sales pitch. Important enough that we'll call it Lesson #4 in our continuing education series for the President. It was a lesson that I completely ignored in my post.

E.D. Kain did what I should have done. He extracted the most important point of my post - the simple fact that Wyden-Bennett bill (a.k.a. the Healthy Americans Act) is much closer to the Health Care Reform solution that Americans were interested in buying, as opposed to the HR 3200 hairball that the President was selling. That was the key selling point. And I buried it on the second page and last paragraph of a long post.

Like I said, it's been bothering me ever since.

What to do? I need to correct that error and here it is. It has been a while since I put together a Powerpoint sales presentation. Google Docs offers free presentation software in the cloud, the app is a little light on bells and whistles, but functional. Good enough for me to offer this penance for my previous sales sin:

A K.I.S.S. Presentation - only 4 simple slides (excluding title and credits) distilling the reasons why Wyden-Bennett is the better health care reform solution now:




This presentation (and/or the graphic at the top of the post) is for the use of anyone who wants it.

Of course, it was impossible for me to leave well enough alone, so there is a more complicated 11 slide presentation linked here, and embedded in a somewhat more allegorical post at Donklephant.

Yes, we are tilting at windmills. But while the Presidents enjoys a little R&R and retools the healthcare strategy, more and more Democrats are offering unsolicited advice, some better than others. Other Democrats are setting expectations that this will take some time. Who knows? Perhaps there is time enough to reach a full gallop and knock that windmill down.

For our next lesson - I may have some suggestions for David Axelrod on how to write a viral e-mail. [DONE - LINK HERE]

UPDATE 28-Aug-09
I think I am channeling Charles Krauthammer. Or he is cribbing from me. Or we think alike. Or we are on the same synchronistic harmonic convergence vibe. Or something. Check out this quote from his WaPo column today:
"...selling pain is poor salesmanship. Promise nothing but pleasure -- for now. Make health insurance universal and permanently protected. Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one -- Obamacare 2.0 -- promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for preexisting conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement. What's not to like? If you have insurance, you'll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for preexisting conditions."
He invokes the poor Obama salesmanship theme as in this post, the recommendation to move from ObamaCare 1.0 to ObamaCare 2.0 as in the slide presentation above, and then we have a strikingly similar quote from my Donklephant post:
"Universal coverage for all, catastrophic illness protection for all, no increase in the deficit and no net new taxes. What’s not to like?"
Weird.

It is more effective when he puts it together concisely in one paragraph. The lesson to learn? - the hardest sales lesson of all.

Keep it simple stupid.

UPDATE: 03-Sep-09
Added link. Fixed typos.

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you mind telling me how the hell I got your slide presentation in my Google Docs account? I know I didn't ask for it to be there.

mw said...

You got me. Talk to google. I published it for ww access, and embedded in some blog presentations here and at Donklephant. Other than that, you are on your own. I don't even know WhoTF you are.