At the last AVCA Convention, I listened to Hall of Fame Coach Terry Pettit’s seminar on Program Building: The Part They Didn’t Tell You About. Terry’s message in the seminar was about telling a story.  I also read an article written by Kathy DeBoer AVCA Executive Director on USA Men’s Olympic Team Gold Medal Head Coach Hugh McCutcheon in the AVCA Coaching Volleyball Magazine, June – July 2009 issue, Building a Sustainable Model of Success (click here to read the article).  Hugh’s message, “Coaches are sales people first, then change agents.  We define principles as absolute truths, and work from there to as oppose to coerce thoughtful dialogue is the key”.

I am continually developing my story and learning how to be a better salesman (although, 10 years in the business world certainly helped), to this audience of 18 – 22 year old college women.  Beyond traditional volleyball sources like AVCA Coaching Volleyball Magazine, I enjoy insight from marketing gurus like Seth Godin.  Following is one of Seth’s blog’s about a bottle of soap and how someone makes an extra $17 on a bottle of soap.

Here’s a $20 bottle of soap. Functionally identical to a $3 bottle, so what’s the $17 for?

Let’s assume the people buying it aren’t stupid. What are they paying $17 for? A story. A feeling. A souvenir of a shopping expedition or perhaps just a little bit of joy in the shower every morning. Let’s dissect:

1. The hang tag. It’s special because most soap doesn’t have a hang tag. Hang tags come on things that are a little more special than soap. And hang tags beg to be read. This one says a lot (and nothing, at the same time.) It reminds us that it doesn’t contain SLS. What’s SLS? Is it as bad as SLES?

2. This isn’t soap. It’s mineral botanic. Both words are meaningless, which means the purchaser can attach whatever feelings they choose to them. In this case, the marketer is hoping for old-time, genuine, down-to-earth and real.

3. It’s not made by a soap company. It’s made in a Dead Sea Laboratory. Laboratories, of course, are where scientists work, and the Dead Sea is biblical, spiritual and really salty. The company has a name (Ahava) that is onomatopoeic and reminds you of breathing. Breathe deep and find calm. [Even better, I'm told it means 'love' in Hebrew].

4. My favorite part is that it’s made from bamboo and pansy. At least a little. Bamboo because it’s fast growing and Asian and gentle and wood and grass at the same time. And pansy… well… pansy is for girls.

5. Two really good things here. First, it’s for very dry skin. This is brilliant. If your skin is dry, you don’t want to hear that it’s sort of dry, kind of dry, not as dry as that guy over there… No, you want to hear that it’s extremely dry, really dry, so dry it’s like sand. That kind of dry. This bottle understands how very dry your skin is, and it’s here to help.

Also, it’s in French! I love that there’s the language of love and sophistication and diplomacy right here on the bottle. I can imagine that models for Chanel are using it on the Rive Gauche as we speak.

6. Did I mention the part about velvet?

It took guts to take this packaging so over the top. It doesn’t match my worldview, but it might match yours. There’s not a lot of room for slightly-out-of-the-ordinary.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/03/telling-a-story-on-the-label.html

Marv Dunphy wrote a great article in the January 2009 Coaching Volleyball Magazine on how the U.S. Men’s Olympic Team won the Gold Medal.  Much overall praise goes Head Coach Hugh McCutcheon’s vision and system.

Following are coaching points of interest by Marv Dunphy:

• How a coach says “no” is more significant than how a coach says “yes”.
• All teams strive to be good in all phases of the game, but the great teams usually have one or two things that they are fabulous at doing.
• The U.S. players individually, or by position, seemed to take turns playing well.
• For the U.S. offense, they scouted and studied every server technically – what kind of arm did he have, how much heat did he have, did he have heat with range, where was the primary location of that heat, did he change depths, did he keep the speed up and did he cut it, did we need to save our timeouts for this server (the smart teams did that with Clay Stanley), what did he do when we adjusted our serve receive pattern (show and take), could we take a jump float with our hands or did we need to pass with our arms, what did he do after any kind of delay, who was their first server, did we need to stay out of our rotations one and two against a certain server, did we need to cover the tape, was it a true spin or did it tumble, etc?
• For offensive tactics, the coaches analyzed what every blocker and defender did on a perfect pass, good pass, medium pass and bad pass.  Mostly, they wanted to know what the opponents tended to do on a perfect pass, and we made tactical plans accordingly.
• The U.S. had a great error-to-block ratio – the team committed 56 hitting errors and was blocked 70 times.  You always want the number of blocks to be higher than the number of errors.
• The U.S. had 12% serving errors, which is very good by international standards.  In collegiate athletics, a good number is 10%.

Marv Dunphy is one of the few coaches with the privledge to coach Karch Kiraly and 2008 Olympic MVP Clay Stanley.  Karch brought the whole game to the court, as he passed, where Clay did not.  But I would like to know from Marv’s point of view the similarities and differences between Karch and Clay.  It’s gotta be an interesting perspective.