The Delia effect
British cookery expert Delia Smith returned to book stores with a new tome last week after a five-year gap, during which her pre-eminence has been challenged by usurpers such as Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson.
The Observer noted that dictionaries now contain the phrase ‘the Delia effect’, to represent the phenomenal growth in sales for products endorsed on her shows. In one spectacular example:
“when she described a ten-inch metal pan as ‘a little gem which will serve you for a lifetime of omelette-making’ , it rescued the struggling Lancashire firm which had been selling only 200 of the pans a year. Lune Metal Products had to take on extra staff to make 90,000 new pans in just four months.”
I’m prompted to think about the obvious parallel in the proposal world. We all know the importance of quoting references, customer quotes, benchmarking data and analyst comment to endorse our capabilities, and thus strengthen the credibility of our story.
Yet all too often, getting hold of such snippets is a real challenge – and it’s easy to blame others: “sales should sort out more case studies”; “product management should find more nice quotes”. If you’re stuck in this rut, I hereby propose that you kick off ‘Project Delia’ immediately to establish the right roles, processes and rewards to break out of the cycle of frustration!
This article was written by Jon on 18 February, 2008 and filed under Musings. If you found it useful, you can with others. To receive automatic updates, subscribe to The Proposal Guys via 
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Given your reputation for knowing wines, food and hotels and your being extensively connected around the world Jon, I suspect a recommendation in any of those categories from you might have the same affect on their repsective sales.
I do think there’s a lot to be said for soliciting customer comments and quotes…and I’d suggest such soliciting be done proactively, rather than at the last minute or in the ‘heat of battle’, so that you have a library of quotes and comments from which to choose.