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OCTOBER 18, 2017

Josiah Tan, co-Founder of Enlightened Profits, a Singapore based Marketing Company, promotes business programs throughout Asia. His goal is nothing short of transforming how business is run across the continent.

After he approached me in an email, there were two things I came to love about his story. The first is his unique bio which explains how he became an entrepreneur. Unlike many bios, it begins with a beautiful, loving tribute to his Mom. Her tough work life inspired him to become financially independent so that she would never have the financial burden of having to care for him.

The second thing I loved about him is his disciplined commitment to becoming a true “Metaphorian,” a natural user of metaphors. Josiah is a “Clipper,” someone who notices and saves metaphors, and relevant articles about metaphors, when and where he hears them. These saved examples serve as potential uses for future situations as well as daily lessons in the many ways metaphors are used to influence, sell and explain things. (Spoiler alert: Becoming a “Clipper” is something I encourage in my book and seminars and urge you to do as well to strengthen your own metaphor making power.)

Josiah wrote, “I keep an Evernote book for Metaphors, Analogies and Similes and update it daily with at least one metaphor.” Here’s a snapshot of a part of his list.

Josiah’s daily habit of intentional metaphor captures has heightened his appreciation for the power of metaphor to influence, sell, and persuade. It helps him convey his ideas more quickly and effectively in a variety of situations to his team, his partners and his clients. Here are two examples of usage, in this case, with his team.

Reshaping Thinking
During team-building meetings, it is not uncommon to have members disagree with a management policy. A manager in that situation can choose to pull rank and decree that this is the way things will be or, he can use the power of metaphor to lead the dissenting team member to see the policy in different light and willingly accept it.

During one such meeting between Josiah and his organization, a member of his group said he thought they should hire people just like themselves in order to succeed. It was pretty clear to Josiah that this person felt very strongly about his statement and that a logical argument on the wisdom of diversity would fall on deaf ears.

Instead of giving a lecture, Josiah responded, “Having a team that has similar personalities is like playing only one key on the piano over and over and over again. The music becomes boring and listeners leave. Similarly, when people on the team are of similar personalities only, they act, sound, and feel the same. Many members eventually become redundant, group-think sets in, and, as a company, you get stale and risk losing your clients.”

“On the other hand, having a diverse team is like playing a melody on a piano. A beautiful melody is created with different keys that complement one another. Listeners want to stay and hear the music. When you have a team with different personality types, you get the benefit from the mix of their unique strengths and weaknesses. You get different points of view, more creative thinking, and, as a company, you stay fresh and more likely to attract new clients.”

Josiah’s naysayer paused, thought about what he heard, saw its inherent truth, and dropped his objection.

Coaching the Sales Team
For a Manager, losing business after doing everything you could is one thing, but losing business because a salesperson made the classic 101 mistake of selling with insufficient prospect information is maddening and unacceptable. This common mistake happens around the world whether it is St. Louis, Sao Paulo, or Singapore, Josiah’s home town.

“We offer a number of really powerful business building seminars to our clients. The good news is my team is very enthusiastic about our programs. The bad news is they sometimes forget to have a proper discovery discussion first before they begin offering solutions. When they do that, they create marketing messages that fail to hit home in their clients’ hearts and we lose business.”

“I tell them, ‘Marketing and selling products to prospects without surveying them first is like going to a doctor who prescribes medicine to you without seeing and diagnosing you first. You wouldn’t trust or use a doctor who did that, so why would you expect a prospect to do business with us without adequate knowledge of his situation, needs, and wants?’”

Josiah reports that that analogy to how they would feel with such a doctor hits their heart and snaps them back into conducting more thorough discovery conversations, so that they offer up only the most appropriate programs to prospects.

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, & thereafter our tools shape us.” Marshall McLuhan

The more “Beholding” and “Clipping” of metaphors that Josiah does, the more naturally they habitually pop up in his communications to help accomplish his goals. I hope his story encourages you to be more mindful as well of the metaphors that you see and hear all around you and to collect them. They are literally everywhere you turn: in conversations with friends, in print, online, social media, TV.

You just need to n-o-t-i-c-e them.

Anne Miller
Make What You Say Pay! — with Metaphors.

P.S. Thank you, Josiah, for your stories & your generous review of my book, Metaphorically Selling, (The updated version is The Tall Lady with the Iceberg: the power of metaphor to sell, persuade & explain anything to anyone).

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"The best arguments
dazzle with metaphor"

Gerry Spence,
Media Commentator & Lawyer

The best firms hire brilliantly
& train relentlessly.

Having a Meeting?  Call today for fresh ideas to take your team to the next level 212-876-1875 or amiller@annemiller.com

"I've been to a lot of training programs and yours was the best!"
 -CRO, MediaMath
 

Metaphor Minute Archives

Links I like

www.changingminds.org
www.nurtureinstitute.com
www.americanrhetoric.com
www.salesopedia.com
www.salesrepradio.com
www.ted.com
www.takethecold.com

Great Resources:

www.suttoncreative.com
www.cartoonbank.com
www.sbsnet.com
www.videomystory.com
www.ceoshow.com

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