You don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.

My wise friend Marshall once said (last Sunday), "You don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle." He was actually talking about my BigMuscle profile at the time, and at first I didn't get it. If I put naked pictures of myself on the site, are they steak, or are they sizzle?

I looked up the saying online, and it appears that it really is a well-known marketing term. I guess the steak is the product, the sizzle is the differentiator, which means the sizzle is all things that make the product different from all the other products in the same category. So to connect the dots, I guess a headless picture of a guy would be steak, but if you see something unique in the picture, you've got sizzle. If you can learn something unique in their written profile, again more sizzle.

This got me thinking about what really sells a person. When I first saw Marshall at the gym about a year ago, my impression of him was that he was gorgeous. But I guess he was gorgeous in the same way that half the other men in the gym were gorgeous. So steak.

But I guess that there really have to be certain characteristics in the steak to even make you notice the sizzle, right? If Sizzler had an advertisement with a rotting steak, covered in flies, sitting in the middle of the most beautifully decorated plate I had ever seen, I still wouldn't buy the steak. There has to be a minimum acceptable threshold of steak quality. Not only that, you actually have to make the steak look gorgeous. You have to work that steak out in the gym and give it good haircuts and proper hygiene and basically look incredibly edible in a pair of gym shorts. Only then will people (and by people I mean other Chelsea boys) introduce themselves to the steak and even have the chance of learning about the sizzle.

Well then the pressure is really on, because the Chelsea boy that just met the steak has undoubtedly met a thousand steaks before, and all of those steaks tried to sell the sizzle. Some of the steaks were funny, some were smart, some had good jobs, some just made him feel good. Som steaks came with a big ol' bone. The Chelsea boy had learned to expect some sizzle with his steak. In fact, he expected a lot. He thought he had a lot of sizzle, gosh darnit, and he deserved some sizzle from others!

I'm not sure if I'm the Chelsea boy or the steak in this analogy anymore, but one thing is clear: you have to sell the steak AND the sizzle. (But don't worry Marshall, you've got them both covered :-)