Seller Meets Buyer Solution Meets Problem Urgent Meets Now

Chinese-born Yang Liu has lived in Germany since age 14.

Her comparison pictograms sped round the web this year.

A trio of coffee table books sprung from the trope of looking at how the same thing is viewed from opposing poles.

Her first collection grew from her upbringing, East Meets West. Birthplace red, adopted homeland blue. There’s plenty of cute cultural captures.

From here spawned the battle-of-the-sexes clickbait of Man Meets Woman, and then Today Meets Yesterday. Both feature several crackers too.

She’s inspired a decent meme or two as well (I note trashrussia & Bangalore traffic examples with a smile).

So it strikes me as a brilliant way of adding something memorable to a slidedeck.

The classic being a before-and-after view.

I understand though that it can be a little daunting.

Pictograms mean a level of artistic application fraught with the fear of failure for a salesperson.

Take comfort from Yang Liu’s treatments. Many are happily shorn of tricky drawing. Dots, boxes and lines abound.

A template we can surely take as our toolbox.

So in this spirit, here’s my triple contribution to the meme.

Starting with how we sometimes feel our thinking about a solution is at odds with our prospect. We’re outside the box, when they obliviously stay within it;

Then how about the discrepancy between who our contact buyerside may tell us is making the decision and the reality of the process;

Finally, the evolution of prospecting. Whereas not so long ago we could tap a phone keypad and call up someone, nowadays we may only ever hear from them after they’ve seen us online. And mostly, buyers reject us – swipe left – and we’ll never even know they looked at us;