We've all been there before... You go to a party (or some other event) with some friends, you meet some people and discuss where you work, and then suddenly you are confronted with this person sharing all of their problems and headaches with your company's product or service. The big question here is how do you respond? Do you suddenly get defensive and avoid the situation? Or do you rise to the occasion, be the ambassador for your company, and deal with the issue head-on? Now ask yourself, how would the owner of your company hope that you would respond?

Product Evangelism is about just this type of situation. Companies typically expect that their own employees would be raving fans of their products. If the people closest to the product cannot be fans of it, then how can they expect consumers to be fans of it. One of my favorite pictures that illustrates this point is the one with the guy paying his cable bill at a drive-up payment center, while he is driving work van for one of the Dish companies. Something like that speaks volumes about how an employee feels about his own company's products and services.

The tricky part about this that in our roles as leaders and managers, we need to foster this type of product loyalty in our employees. What kinds of products and services can you provide to your employees so that they don't have to go to a competitor to get them? How can you develop a sense of pride in the products or services so that employees are excited about them when talking to other people?

There should be an energy in the air around your company about what it is doing. In a company where your employees are excited about the products, they will also tend to be more creative, and productive. They will enjoy talking about the company that they work for even when away from the office.