First, picture an apple.
Easy to do.
Why?
“Because you’ve experienced apples with your senses,” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
“You’ve probably done some combination of touching, tasting, seeing, and smelling an apple,” Erik and Tim note.
“You’ve even heard the crunching sound that an apple makes when you bite into it.”
An apple is concrete because you’ve experienced it with your senses.
Likewise, something is abstract if you’ve never experienced it with your senses.
“An example of an abstract idea,” the authors write, “would be increased efficiency or improved productivity.
“Those are things that you can’t experience with your senses.”
Today, most sales professionals are selling abstract ideas.
Which presents a problem.
“People,” the authors explain, “are not as motivated by abstract ideas as they are by things that are concrete.”
2: Fortunately, there is a solution.
Erik and Tim explain: “There is no more powerful technique than this one, for simplifying an abstract or complex message.
“It’s called Big Pictures.”
Typically, when someone says they are going to give you “the big picture,” they mean the overall situation or broader perspective.
Get ready for a lengthy monologue.
“But that’s not what you’re hearing from us when you hear the words Big Picture,” the authors write.
For Erik and Tim, a Big Picture is a visual.
Sometimes, the best Big Pictures are something you can draw yourself.
“They simplify a complex message and make abstract ideas concrete,” they observe.
They “help explain a concept in the moment, as well as making the concept easier to remember later,” Erik and Tim note.
Understand it now. Remember it later.
Yesterday, we saw a powerful example of a Big Picture in action. The Rio presenter used a map of the world and the cities that had previously hosted the Olympic Games to make one fact impossible to miss: South America had never hosted the Games.
3: So why do many presenters not use this powerful tool?
“I speak very clearly,” they say. “Why would I need a visual to support what I’m saying?”
Or, they reason that their prospects are smart people.
“The implication,” the authors write, “is that only unintelligent people need a visual to help them understand a concept.”
Not smart.
“Here is what you need to know,” the authors emphasize. “The reason you should use Big Pictures has nothing to do with how good you are at talking, and it has nothing to do with how smart your prospects are.”
The goal isn’t to compensate for an audience that doesn’t understand. It’s to turn an abstract idea into something they can see.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: What important idea do you regularly communicate that is difficult for people to see, touch, or experience?
Action: Take one abstract idea you need to communicate and sketch a simple visual that makes it concrete.
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