Do your presentations grab your listener—or send them into a coma?  Are they filled with charts, data, facts and figures—or do they show your prospect why they should invest in your product?  Do they make your listener yearn for relief from the agony of the presentation–or light up their eyes with interest and enthusiasm?   

How deeply you touch your prospect will determine just how well your presentation will communicate.  If you kill ‘em with boredom, you lose; if you get them involved to the point they see and feel your words, you stand a great chance of winning.
 

If you’re in sales, your life is filled with presentations—whether presentations to group or one-on-one with prospects, clients, and management.   

Unlike most books on presentations, Anne Miller’s, Metaphorically Selling (Chiron Associates, 2004) isn’t a manual on making presentations, rather this great little book is a guide to making your presentations move your prospects by showing them what you want to communicate through the use of metaphors and similes.   

Miller demonstrates through the use of real-world examples, as well as her own use of metaphors, how how you communicate is as important as what you communicate, maybe even more so.  For example, she shows how a very simple metaphor saved Chrysler from permanently closing their doors; how she won a major training contract by using the company whose business she was seeking as the core of the metaphor that won her the business; how Southwest Airlines diffused anxiety over the retirement of Herb Kelleher by use of a metaphor; how a metaphor helped the family of Karen Silkwood win their case against Kerr –McGee; and many others straight out of real life. 

And don’t think of metaphors and similes as simply words.  Miller shows how props, pictures, slides and other media can be used as effective metaphors also. 

From the opening of your presentation to the close—and everywhere in-between, Miller shows you how to change your presentations from ordinary to highly effective with the use of the simple metaphor.  Metaphors aren’t just for English class anymore.  Now they’re your ticket to more sales.

 You can find Metaphorically Selling at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.