Selling in a Time of Corona – S2E7 – Two Elliots for the Price of One

Creative opening

Elliot Goblet:               I went to a restaurant, there was a sign that said, “We take all cards”, so I gave them a sympathy card with the words “Sorry, I left my wallet at home”.

I have a total of three and a half alcohol free days a week. I don't drink every day of the week for the first half of the day.

You know, when it comes to superior service, you can't go past Optus. I'm not just saying that because Optus is one of the sponsors. I said exactly the same thing last month at a Telstra function. And they really appreciated my honesty.

Elliot Epstein:             So, someone at a bat, apparently, and the world turned upside down. Hi, I'm Elliot Epstein and I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life coaching, consulting, training and speaking about all facets of self-development, pitching, presentations, negotiation, the C-Suite sales calls and all of the various components in the sales cycle in between. And now we find ourselves in a world that's very foreign.

Welcome to Selling in a Time of Corona.

Elliot Epstein:            Jack Levi, a.k.a. comedian Elliot Goblet, has been performing to corporate audiences for decades, tailoring his material to industries as diverse as mining, agriculture, telecommunications and retail. We have a history because when I was originally in sales, instead of going with the other reps for a drink, I would be writing and performing. Yes, I was a stand-up comedian for over 10 years, doing gigs for corporate cruises, weddings, bar mitzvahs, clubs, you name it.

I even got to be the opening act of the Honolulu Comedy Club with a bunch of US comics, which was pretty cool. But it was a cutthroat business well before today's comics scene, which is far more encouraging and supportive. There were assholes who split your mic in two before you went on. So, your opening was completely fumbled when you had really good material. There was no compunction of many comics back then to just steal it. Many had radio spots like me, and it certainly wakes you up in the morning when you turn the radio on at 7am to find your own material coming out of someone else's mouth.

But Jack was different, supportive, encouraging, never disparaging and most uniquely, never judgmental about whether my material would work or not. As you'll hear, he has respect for people and his audiences. So, as I've been coaching presentations during Covid-19 for video conferences, I've noticed that the tailoring, the crafting of specific messages to particular audiences has actually dropped off. There are too many webinars, too many presentations that are generic and still very heavy on the show-up and throw-up dump of information. As if you're on death row and this is your last ever presentation, so you better tell them everything.

I wanted to catch up again with Jack to talk about how he tailors his corporate presentations, not just to communicate, but in his case to get that cathartic reaction we call laughter. Stick around to the end, though, I want to share the three key takeaways that you can implement to grab your audience's attention in your next presentation. Here is my chat with Jack Levi.

Hello, Jack, it's great to catch up with you again. So, tell me what a corporate comedian is up to in the middle of Covid-19 2020?

Jack Levi:                     Not a lot, Elliot. And I got to say, the last job I did was in mid-March this year. And that was actually a wedding. That's apart from doing corporate work. I also do the odd wedding, and that was a wedding in Canberra mid-March this year. And I have not stepped on stage since then. Understandably, yeah.

Elliot Epstein:            It's a difficult time for a lot of people, but it's a good time for us to catch up and talk about the preparation that people go through. And I thought we would attack this slightly leftfield approach in that, you know, people are sitting there right now looking at the PowerPoint decks, looking at their presentations, and they're not always tailoring it to the best of their ability to the audiences. They tend to do the stock standard and cut and paste too much.

So, I wanted to get into your background and understand a little more about how you would prepare and tailor for a corporate audience and some of the examples that you might have used to make sure that a) the comedy hits the mark and b), the audience receives the messages pretty well. So perhaps you could tell us a bit about that.

Jack Levi:                   Absolutely, and I've got to say, I put a lot of emphasis on tailoring, I remember back in the mid-80s, it was, and I was about to do my fourth ever corporate job and comedy expert Pete Croft suggested that I just include a few lines that are written for that audience. So, I wrote four jokes about for the people in the room. And amazingly, those four lines got the biggest response, even though on paper they were probably the weakest of my act.

But I got the biggest response because they were emotionally impacting and that showed the audience that I was getting inside their world. So, I guess from that brief experience with the four lines, I realized that this is the way to go. And I've been tailoring my corporate acts ever since and I've done over sixteen hundred now. So, I put a lot of value on tailoring to the audience and it's worth putting in the time.

In terms of how I do it, well, once I get the client contact details, I contact them and sometimes I'll meet with them. Other times it'll be over the phone. Sometimes it'll be just with one person, sometimes with a group of people. And I ask lots and lots of questions about the industry, the company and the people. And that chat can go for around about an hour and a half. But it's a worthwhile chat. And from that, because I've got a lot of templates, comedy templates, it's so easy for me then to convert information into jokes.

Because I've got the formulas and I've built them up over time, so I'm writing tailored material is a lot easier than writing those crazy one liners that I put out.

Elliot Epstein:           You know, it is because you put that research in. In that hour and a half session with a client, and believe it or not, I see corporate presenters that spend four hours on their deck and don't even spend 10 minutes talking to the prospective audience, would you believe? So, you know, it's astounding, really. And in that 90 minutes, what sort of areas would you uncover to have the emotional impact that you want?

Jack Levi:                    Well, industry issues, company issues, people issues, for example, from talking to a company, I might ask them things like who is their competitor?

Because I've got a tasteful joke that I can use, about competitors, I ask them things like, what are the bottlenecks, what are the delays in their lives?

And I've got jokes about things that delay the week to week or month to month progress, out of stock items, undelivered promises. I ask those sorts of questions and a lot of organizations have the same issues. And from that, I convert the specific issue to a joke because I've got the templates. With people I've got jokes for everything you could think about a person, their passions, the hates, their weaknesses, their idiosyncrasies. So, I explore that and I'm able to write tasteful episodes, tasteful jokes about people, because over time I've found that increasingly organizations have become sensitive about what you say about people in the room.

Interestingly, I did a job for a yogurt company back in 2012, which included all of the industry, company and people jokes I wanted to do and that went well. But in 2018, when they got me back, they asked me not to include people jokes because of the sensitivity that had developed, the extra sensitivity that developed over those six years from 2012 to 2018. There was a certain paranoia. There was a fear of, you know, charges or whatever.

So, they were sensitive. And even though the people jokes went well in 2012, they asked me not to do them in 2018. Interesting.

Elliot Epstein:           It is interesting, you know, the sensitivity because of the changes in attitude towards race, gender diversity and other issues is very different. So how do you go about navigating that? Because some people ask me, I often ask them to put a creative in the front of the corporate presentation. Could be an article from the Financial Review. It could be a video, or it could be something amusing. So, what sort of creatives do you look at now to still get that bond and that that laugh out there when you're talking about people and businesses, when you have to be conscious of that newfound sensitivity?

Jack Levi:                   Well, in my case, I haven't changed much at all because I don't do material that offends, I don't do racist stuff, political stuff that might offend the audience. So, I haven't had to change in that area much at all. I've got to say, I've just got this I guess I've got this inbuilt sensitivity and this inbuilt desire to be tasteful. So, yeah, I guess it's easy for me while being difficult for other comedians who have depended on smut, racist jokes or whatever.

I don't have to worry about that.

Elliot Epstein:           That's probably one of the reasons why you've had such a long, successful career, Jack, when, you know, others have fallen by the wayside. And apart from Covid-19 gigs, you've been doing this for so long because of that safety aspect.

Can you think of a couple of examples of some of your best lines that you really think have hit the mark because you tailor the content? And equally, can you think of a time when it bombed because you hadn't done enough research or because you misread the audience?

Jack Levi:                   Yeah, the one where, the memorable one where I bombed was the job I did for the Victorian Sheep Breeders Association with the audience, just did not get it at all.

They thought that I was purposely trying not to be funny because my humour was just too dry for them. And that's going back to 1987. So that was, that was a tough one. But there was a table of younger people that were laughing at my jokes, but they soon quietened down because they didn't want to offend the older people who weren't getting into it. That one stands out. There's been, there was on occasion, I remember doing a job for a mining company in New South Wales and they told me that it was okay to do jokes on people.

But when I did them, I realised that that was the wrong way to go because there was a bit of sensitivity at that particular event. So, I regretted doing them.

But once it started, it was hard to stop. I kept my people's segment short, but that was a tough one.

Elliot Epstein:           Can you think of an example of where it really hit, where it was really successful because of that research?

Jack Levi:                   Well, it's hit a lot of times. I've got to say, I'm not trying to boast, but it's worked really well for me. Generally, the standard audiences for me have been Amway audiences, because you get a standing ovation before you start.

They are very welcoming. Their audience, they are just on a natural high and then really good to talk to, such positive people.

And in fact, the Amway story is interesting because it was an agent in Sydney that I was talking to and he said to me, “You really divide audiences you know; some people love you and some hate you”.

And he said, I was just talking to an Amway Diamond who said, “Not Elliot Goblett… too deadpan”. And I said to this agent, “Well, as it happens, I just did an amazing job in New Zealand. And I’ve got a testimonial letter”. And he asked me to send him that testimonial letter, which he then forwarded on to this Diamond, an Amway Diamond on the Gold Coast, and that client turned around 180 degrees and decided to use me.

And because my material was not smutty and not racist, not crude, I got another six Amway jobs from other Diamonds around Australia. So, it's interesting that the perception sometimes of Elliot Goblett does not equal the reality.

Elliot Epstein:          Yeah, absolutely, everyone's got their own taste and we can only read it as best we can.

Elliot Epstein:          I remember presenting at a conference once and picked someone out in the audience and just picked a few people to introduce themselves.

And this woman said, “Hi, my name's so-and-so, but people call me Digi because my first job was at Digital Corporation. And I said, “Lucky you didn't work for Country Road then”.

Jack Levi:                   Wow, what an incredible sort of response that would have got.

Elliot Epstein:          Yes, so there was there was a delay, like a pause that went on for seemingly forever and then this uproar of laughter, which released all the tension. And surprisingly, I don't think she quite got it. And which is I'm eternally grateful for because I think I would have been in big trouble otherwise. Yeah, so everyone has their own taste. So just finally, Jack, you know, given that we're edging towards the end of Covid-19, hopefully, certainly where we are in Melbourne, what sort of things do you think you're going to be doing now that people are on Zoom, people having conferences, leadership conferences, aside from live gigs, whenever they might happen.

What sort of things do you think you might be doing in that space?

Jack Levi:                   Well, I hadn't really considered doing Zoom, I was prepared just to wait for life to start up again, but, you know, that might take a fair while.

Jack Levi:                   So, I'm open to doing something on Zoom. Now, may mate Vince Sorrentti has done around about 10 of those events on Zoom and, you know, things like awards nights.

And I'm open now to doing, you know, a few of those before we open up again with live work.

Elliot Epstein:          I think this is going to be around for a while. So, you know, having someone like you sitting in the corner of the screen with tailored material would be pretty cool for a lot of people having those sorts of conferences.

Jack, it's been terrific to catch up with you again. I really appreciate you joining me on Selling in a Time of Corona. The key message that I think everyone's heard is that there's an enormous amount of work that goes into the templates you've built to get those laughs and the research you do every single time. You don't just paint by numbers that you put in a considerable amount of work because the impact it has on the audience is huge. And you only get those bookings that you're talking about.

But the repeat bookings by people enjoying the fact that it's about them and not about you. And I think a lot of presenters could take a lot out of that. Thank you again. I'll let you go for a walk. I've only got 55 minutes left, I think, before the police come and get you.

Jack Levi:                   Yeah, I've got to say, you’ve got a great name, Elliot, good on you.

Elliot Epstein:          Thanks, Jack.

Elliot Epstein:         Well, I guess it's Two Elliots for the Price of One today. But before you go and get your next PowerPoint slide deck out, here are my key takeaways to really grab your audience's attention.

1) Never present to strangers.

With Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, CRM, etc. you should easily be able to do some research on who's attending and their backgrounds. Are they an MBA or have they spent 20 years in financial services and only recently moved into the mining sector? There's tons of information. I hear some presenters say the client just said it'll be six of them, a couple from my IT and a couple from marketing. Sorry, that's not good enough. If you're going to the trouble of tailoring a presentation, they at least owe you the names and roles of the people attending. If it's a webinar, you can still get the names and companies and like Jack, spend the time doing the research.

2) Call them or email them in advance.

If it's a select decision-making team, call each and every one and say, “Hi, it's Jane here”, assuming your name is Jane, “I'm presenting on the new Collectimiser 2000 series on Thursday. Tell me, given your role, what would you most like to see?” If it's a larger audience, email them with expectations. You might even send them a one-page company overview so you can cover the credibility piece before you even present on the day. Oh, and ask them in the email, “Hi, I'm available between now and next week. Please email, text or call me with any specific topics you'd like to cover.”

3) Ask around in advance.

It's frightening how much knowledge exists in some companies from their history. Send an email to your whole company or region that says simply, “Hi, everyone, we're presenting to the law firm of Dewey, Fuck You and How next week, does anyone know John Howe or their procurement guy Ben Dover? If so, please get in touch so they can prepare for this really important presentation.”

So, there you are, three ways you can improve the impact of your presentations through professional research.

Stay safe. Stay positive.

Remember, your ears are safe. Jack and I wore protective clothing supplied by Digital and Country Road during this entire podcast.

Take care of yourselves …. till next time.