Tis the season to go shopping...fa la la la la, la la la laaaa. Are you searching for that perfect gift for that computer geek in your life? Well, here's a Christmas shopping story that may give you some ideas. It'll also show you why America is the land of opportunity and a capitalist's dream come true.
A few years ago my buddy and I used to work weekends at a computer show during the holidays. You can imagine the scene -- hundreds of desperate Christmas shoppers all milling frantically about trying to find the perfect geeky accessories. Of course, many of the attendees at the show were IT novices who were just there because someone told them it was the place to find the latest and greatest computer gadgets and toys. Half the fun of working at the show was watching the tech newbies wander around and answering their random questions.
Proving this theory, one of the most frequent requests from our customers was for a keyboard with an "Any" key. Apparently at the time, as one of the customers informed us, there were some programs that requested users to hit the "Any" key -- an option not available on most keyboards. My buddy and I just couldn't figure out where all these "Any" key searchers were coming from -- Mars?
Finally, we got tired of people asking for this feature and we ordered a batch of overlay keys printed with the word "Any" on them. Then we wrote an applet that when scheduled to run would scroll a few text lines across the screen. We told people to place the overlay key over their "Esc" key on their keyboard and that they would be able to use both functions once the program ran. Believe it or not, we sold each of these overlay keys for $5 a piece during the show.
The "Any" key turned out to be our hottest seller and we had many repeat customers. And we received accolades like you wouldn't believe. It was the easiest money I ever made and we were one of the most popular booths at the show. It was one of the merriest Christmases I've ever had.
Lesson Learned: You can sell anybody just about anything these days…especially when it's the holidays!
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