Be heard. Be understood. Get the results you want.
I am most thankful that Ms. Anne Miller sent me her book in 2005: Metaphorically Selling. This book has four sections and one hundred and sixty-eight pages.
Anne is the founder of Chrion Associates Inc., a widely respected sales and presentation speaker,seminar leader, consultant, and author. She assists high profile 1000 companies in media, financial services and business sectors, including Yahoo! and over 100 consumer and business magazines. She sells products and services worth millions of dollars. She has appeared on CNNfn and Bloomberg News Radio.
Billions of dollars are left on the table and hundreds of ideas fail to get off the ground every day because of the over-communicated society in which we live.
This book will guide the reader step-by-step through the process of incorporating metaphors into sales pitches, presentations, and speeches, including exercises and tips to cultivate and sustain a competitive edge using metaphors.
Packed with more than 250 examples from business,media and the small business owner to the corporate executive - to lead their listeners to "yes" by becoming a "Metaphorian" -- a master of metaphor.
In 1980, Lee Iacocca went to Congress to get $1.2 Billion in loan guarantees for the then failing Chrysler Corporation. He argued, quite successfully. Chrysler's problems were America's problems; Chrysler's bankruptcy would be America's loss.
Iacocca got his money.
Iacocca's one small phrase won him $1.2 Billion Dollars.
Lee Iacocca understood the power of metaphors, visual words that conjure an image in the listener's mind and unleash a torrent of associations.
That is the power of speaking metaphorically. You can change minds.
In Anne's twenty years of teaching sales and presentation seminars, one key factor that she see repeatedly sets sellers apart from their competition is their choice of words. It is not enough to present; you must communicate.
Metaphors help a client see possibilities he didn't see before and they help him make the best decision.
In Section One you'll learn that the brain actually craves the visual and the emotional; that you must appeal to both the left and right sides of your client's brain to make a sale.
In Section Two you'll learn the four-step workout which you will focus on your client - his needs, his concerns, his experience - so that you can come up with companies he can best relate to.
In Section Three you'll see how metaphors make attention - getting openers. You'll see how to use them to position your services, distinguish your products, explain your ideas, make your points and word off objectives.
In Section Four you'll be helpled by sustaining your competitive commuinication edge with more exercises and tips.
What Do You Sell?
Words Matter.
It's not that presenters aren't prepared: they know their material, they've worked up a slick PowerPoint presentation, they've got excellent hand-outs. But their verbal skills and or approach to communicating cost them their audience. They confuse information with communciation.
Metaphoric language - will surprise, grab, inform and persuade your listeners as mere explanation will not. And in our world of information overload, that gives you a tremendous competitive advantage.
A Metaphor is simply a way of communicating.
Information + Metaphor = "I see what you mean!"
Snapshot your client by drawing on their personal background, industry or business, common knowledge and or general life experiences.
Sometimes a metaphor will fail because it isn't given enough explanation to succeed.
Her goal is to get you to see the possiblilites of what ytou may be missing. You're going to see all the ways a presentation can increase your selling power and bring you more business.
PERSPECTIVE
It's like a stained - glass window. You have to step back to get the full effect.
Learn how to weave metaphor into your business arguments to sell an idea, clear up confusion, shake up indifference, close a sale, vaporize objectives, wow an audience, inspire action, and make your point.
Angela Doreathy Watkins, http://www.e-angelaswisdom.com, awatkins12@yahoo.com
Book Reviewer, Consulting, Personal Life Enrichment Coach, Christian Life Coach, - Biblical Coaching, former First Lady
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