Scott Leland, president and creator of Milwaukee-based Player Map, created the comic strip Opal as a way to expose a younger generation of salespeople to Player Map and his techniques.
"I have been doing sales for a long time, and Player Map is such a unique way to visualize a sales plan that I wanted to come up with a cutting edge way to get the attention of younger new age thinkers," Leland said.
Player Map provides visual sales plans for companies.
When the economy started to plummet last fall, Leland decided he needed a way to expose more people to Player Map’s online tool. He came up with the idea for a comic strip that featured a young intelligent and "hip" salesperson as the main character.
He interviewed various cartoonists, gave them his idea and told them to run with it. Cartoonist, Stan Yan of Denver, Colo., designed and came up with Opal’s appearance and together with Leland, the two created 52 comic strips and designed the other characters of Miles and Larry.
"The characters are really great," Leland said. "Opal is this kind of a biting, edgy and hip younger person, while Larry is the classic character, old mind sales guy that thinks like salespeople used to think, and Miles is this younger hip guy that questions everything. Together they make a great vehicle for younger people to get a glimpse at what I call old age selling.”
Leland worked with Milwaukee-based Ascedia Inc. to develop an Opal itunes application.
"The Opal application is free to download, and every Wednesday, a new cartoon is sent to your iphone or ipod touch," Leland said. "I wanted to reach the younger edgy crowd of iphone users. I wanted them to see this is the way selling used to be done, this is the way it should be done now and make the connection to Player Map and maybe give us a call. It’s just a different way of marketing our skills."
