Painting Pictures With Words Spurs

We're not poets. Nor copywriters. Simply solution salespeople.

Yet how many times do we miss a trick of those wordsmiths?

I recall long ago touching on the selling punch of the metaphor.

Now, through the improbable source of youth footballers, comes a reminder we can motivate our prospects in a way that differs from any competition.

Those we pitch may well not have thought of being more lovely than a Summer's day. Or a cloud lonely wandering. Let alone wish to encounter a nightmare dressed as a daydream. Yet there is a state to which they will either aspire or wish to conspire to avoid.

Admittedly the sample size is small, but among twenty youngsters at an elite academy, it seems the metaphor unlocked appreciable measured performance improvements.

In their case with sprints, three per cent. Which in a pursuit driven by fine margins, we might all like a piece of.

The study tested external against internal cues. Meaning providing focus on either their environment and surrounds, or themselves with body movement directions. The former won through. And when augmented, the results were improvements considered instant, compared to the otherwise expected months.

Examples given included to run "like a jet plane taking off into the sky ahead", and "like you’re being chased up a hill".

This augmented, external simile style is something we can certainly conjure.

Incidentally, not only for prospects, but also when giving feedback in general.

The tricky part is finding that analogy that both stirs the prospect and sets us as provider apart.

So start testing away today, and immediately save that jet from being chased into a hill.