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January 11, 2006
The new sales process
Instead of a kick-off sales meeting at a hotel or arena for employees only, which many companies do this time of year, Apple has Steve Jobs do a 90-minute presentation at Macworld that's live, then archived, on the Web.
It's a heckuva way to have a kickoff meeting: invite your customers and the world to participate.
Apple's process goes something like this:
1. Prepare weeks in advance of what your CEO will demo. (Mike Evangelist explains in illuminating detail the preparation involved for a Steve Jobs keynote.)
2. Ensure there's a strong focus on secrecy to stir the flames of interest.
3. Give the gadget press great seats (and wi-fi) for their minute-by-minute coverage.
4. Promote the keynote on the front page of your website.
5. Ensure the purchase process for everyone involved is easy.
That's why, after watching Jobs late last night in the comfort of my own home in Chicago, that I'm out the door now this afternoon to the Apple store a mile away. I'm going to purchase the new version of iLife; his live demo of the podcasting features built into GarageBand sold me.
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Ben, can you give a quick review of the new features in iLife '06? I think the ease in the ability to share pictures, movies and music through RSS feeds has some awesome potential. Also, how easy is it to create a podcast in garageband? I've got some money burning a hole in my pocket. Thanks in advance!
The podcast feature in GarageBand is intuitive and easy to use. It has pre-set tracks for "male voice" and "female voice" (just like what we do with our podcasts) and tracks for jingles (background music) and photos that can be timed with the tracks.
Plus, it features automatic ducking (bringing the music volume down when there's a voicetrack playing).
The biggest ding against the podcast feature: it only exports to AAC/mp4. No option (that I can find) to save/export to mp3. If this is really the case, then that's good ol' Apple proprietary format thinking again and would require an mp4-to-mp3 converter.
I don't mean to throw water on the concept, but how is this new? Apple has been doing this for many years. Is it only new because you were recently made aware of it? Or do you think that like many things, Apple has been ahead of its time, and "the rest of us" are finally catching up?
Obviously for Apple, it's not new. A Steve Jobs keynote has been an annual occurrence since, hmmm.... good question.
I'm hard-pressed to come up with other example companies that gather its customers together each year (not just employees), introduce a slew of new products and send them off in swirl of word of mouth and press coverage.
