Shopping Channel Tips That Stuck

Welsh comic actor, writer and impressionist Rob Brydon gave insight in what appears a brief yet crucial early step on the entertainment career ladder. Back around 1989.

He landed a job presenting. On a short-lived tv shopping channel.

He laughs off the episode now. Claiming to have put the unseemly experience with its whiff of embarrassment out of his memory.

Yet when promoting his latest stage role, he did reveal he learnt things that stay with him all those years since.

A general point was that he became able to read autocue.

There's a parallel for us here. In how we often must deliver a written word to a live audience as if its natural. As if it's our first time saying so. With character, clarity and conviction.

There's one remnant on Youtube where with a colleague, he demolishes a hover mower. In the slot, you do get a picture of another Sales angle that stuck with him. "You sell the benefit, not the product".

We all know this. Yet it's all too easy to drift. Slipping down the trap of the 'what'.

Lastly, he recalls the real kicker.

"You tell people how it’s going to make them feel."

I'll let you work through that nugget yourself.