The Power of a Metaphor

The more unexpected the metaphor, the more information it carries. Blair has four less-obvious metaphors to give you access to entire playbooks in just four words when selling your expertise.

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"The Power of a Metaphor" written by Blair Enns for winwithoutpitching.com

Transcript

David C. Baker: Today, Blair, I'm going to interview you and the topic is-- Have you heard what the topic is?

Blair Enns: I just gave you the title. You just asked me before we started recording, "What's the topic?"

David: The power of a metaphor. You really are not going to need much today because I've got a lot to say.

Blair: Oh, great. I'll just mail this one in again.

David: The whole audience is like, "Oh, this is great. We're going to hang around." Here's what I like about this topic is back to my sixth book, the one on secret trade craft, the whole point of that book was that if you are a tightly positioned expert, then it doesn't stop there. You have to be working in an expert way too, which I learned a lot from you, not just because that's what people expect of experts, but because once you're tightly positioned, there are still a whole bunch of people you could work with. You need a unique point of view to distinguish you from the other people that are in this smaller consideration set, which is one of the things that you're going to talk about today.

Before I turn you loose, I just want to bless you with some of my favorite metaphors. This is one of my favorite ones.

Blair: Do you hear this, audience? This is what I put up with.

[laughter]

David: The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. Isn't that beautiful?

Blair: Where did you get that?

David: Here's another one. He was unpredictable and mysterious, like a jigsaw puzzle at the base of a volcano.

Blair: What?

David: Look at that moment of silence right there. That was so stunningly good.

Blair: Are these Yogi Berra-isms?

David: He was as tall as a 6'3 tree. That is gold right there. [chuckles]

Blair: Where are you getting these?

David: I don't want to blame this on AI, but it's possible I looked them up, examples of really bad metaphors. This is back to the point, the power of a metaphor. I love this topic. Talk to us about why and give us a brief-- what's the right word? Introduction. Thank you.

Blair: [laughs] We are on our A-games here so far. A metaphor. These four words, "This is like that," technically that's a simile, but for all the English majors out there, we're going to group metaphors and similes together. Four words, "This is like that," delivers so much information. Metaphors just contain volumes of information.

I wrote a post on this recently, and the example I gave in the post is I was on this whitewater kayaking course. It's the only time, I think, that I've sat in a whitewater kayak. It's not like I know how to whitewater kayak, but I own the flat-- what are known as ocean kayaks, even though we kayak on a lake. I've paddled canoes my whole life and I've kayaked for many years.

A friend of mine said to my wife and me, "Hey, I have to get certified in whitewater kayaking. Why don't you guys come with me?" I thought, "Yes, this will be easy. I know how to paddle. This will be no problem." We go out, we're on the water. It's fine on flat water. Then we get onto the moving water and I'm completely lost. I am constantly upside down in this boat. You love this.

At some point the instructor comes over to me and says, "Here, maybe this will help. Kayaking is like skiing." With those four words, I was like, "I got it." I understood it. Not only am I not a great whitewater kayaker, I'm not a great skier, but I've done it enough, I understand it. As soon as she said, "Kayaking is like skiing," she didn't need to say anything else. I instantly got it in a flash. I understood that current is slope and I understood I got to quit leaning into the hill and I need to fall forward down the hill. I instantly understood that I was carving with my wrong edge.

Kayaking is like skiing. Four words in this metaphor. In my mind, I have the playbook of the mental understanding of this other sport. Again, I'm not great at it, but I've done it enough that I understand it mentally. I had muscle memory that I could apply. Four words, there's no other short phrase she could have done for me. It was like the playbook was downloaded into my brain. In truth, it was already there and she just pointed out, "Use this playbook that you have."

David: Just connect it.

Blair: That's the power of a metaphor.

David: Here we are, or here you are, talking about selling, which is something that people think of as being upside down in a kayak. [laughs] Like, "I'm not good at this. I don't enjoy it. I hope nobody has a camera." Selling expertise is not something that feels natural to them. Because it doesn't feel natural, it's not something they enjoy. Extending this, that's really what we're talking about here, the power of a metaphor in selling expertise, which is such a beautiful concept.

Blair: Because I teach selling, as the years go by, I become aware of more and more things that selling is like, so more metaphors for selling. The idea is I have four different metaphors- and maybe we'll even get into five or six, but I have four different metaphors that I can share with you, the listener. When I say these words, "Selling is like," or, "Selling is," then if you understand the topic that I'm relating selling to, then you will instantly have this playbook that you can use to become a better salesperson.

David: I read these four that you have that we'll start out with, but I was struck by one that was missing based on the most recent book you wrote on the four conversations. Selling is like a conversation in a way. It's not on your list here, but I love every one of these. Let's start with the first one. Selling is like leading.

Blair: Selling is leading. Until recently, I didn't know who the originator of this saying was, I do now. I'm fond of saying, "In any sale of expertise, the sale is the sample of the engagement to follow." It turns out it was Mahan Khalsa. I don't even think it's in his book. I think it's him talking about how he sells. He says, "My sale is the sample of how I deliver."

I think those are profound words. I talk about this in the book, The Four Conversations. It's not true in the sale of goods or in the sale of transactional services, but in any sale of expertise, the sale is the sample of the engagement to follow. The roles are assigned, the client tries on what it would be like to work with you. If you don't lead in the sale, you won't be allowed to lead in the engagement.

I talk about leading a lot. At some point it occurred to me many years ago now that selling really is leading. I was reading-- I forget what book. I haven't read a lot of books on leadership as most of the people who have worked for me over the years will tell you. I was reading something on leadership and I thought, "I talk about leadership in selling all the time," but it was just obvious to me that you could take this book and you could just substitute out the word "leading" for "selling" and "leader" for "salesperson", and you would have a handbook for how to be a better salesperson.

The person listening to this, if you are a good leader and if you have studied it and if you do have a playbook for leadership, I'm telling you, it translates almost exactly to the sale of expertise. Now I'll just make a generalization about one of the reasons why these four metaphors are powerful is they're unexpected because we think of selling-- now the generalization, we tend to think of selling as convincing, as persuasion, as the act of talking people into things.

If I come along and say, "No, selling expertise is like leading," or, "Selling is leading," that allows you in an instant, should you choose to see the power in this metaphor, you jettison an old playbook and maybe a playbook that made you a little bit uncomfortable and drop in a brand new playbook, a playbook that you already have, you're just not using it for this use.

David: I don't want to spring a very difficult question on you without any preparation opportunity on your part, but why is it that people don't think of selling as leading? What is the big roadblock that keeps them from thinking that way? Because when I heard that the first time, I liked how it sounded. It resonated with me, but it was such a different thought. It was such a new thought. It was so odd to think of because, you typically think of it the other way. It's like, "Well, all the power is with the buyer. How am I going to be leading? I'm trying to impress them." Anyway, why is that such a non-standard thought?

Blair: I think one reason is when we're selling expertise, we don't really think of it as expertise so much as we do think of it as a service. There is the old service sector mantra that the customer is always right. That's one thing. We tend to acquiesce to the customer. I think there's something different about sales. We've talked about this before where, the listener, you're a very good communicator and conversationalist, but there's something that happens when the context of the conversation is around selling something. Everything seems to change. You get stiff. You get awkward. You forget some of your most basic skills. There are probably other reasons in there too.

I think we tend to think of it more as responding or convincing. I don't think it's natural for most people to think of selling as leading. I think, again, the more unexpected the metaphor, the more information it transmits. Selling is leading is one of the better ones, certainly not the best one on this list of four. I think a lot of people would listen to that and go, "Yes, I can see that. That makes sense to me," with very few people challenging it.

I love to be sold to when somebody is leading, even when they're not necessarily selling me exclusively expertise. Last week, we needed new siding-- We have a separate building that houses my office upstairs and my workshop downstairs. I asked around and I got the same firm recommended to me by multiple people. They came out. Julie was with me when they were selling and, in a moment when they couldn't hear me, I said, "This is going to be $40,000, I know it." She like, "What?" I said, "I'll bet it is and I'll bet we pay it too."

Even though they were selling a product and some expertise, not quite the same stuff that most of the people are listening here sell, but I was so impressed with how-- it made me feel taken care of, it made me feel like, "Oh, they have done this before and there's the right mix of listening to me carefully, noticing me, seeing me, but also not letting me inject my bad ideas, which they have heard a million times when they sell to somebody."

It's not just selling is leading from the person who's selling, but if the person who's being led feels good too in this process. I hope that makes sense anyway.

David: You think of the definition of leading or leadership, word for word, it escapes me, but the idea is, the leader says, "People, we're going in this direction." There's no mandate, there's not, "You're going to follow me or else." It's, "We're going in this direction," and you are inspired to want to follow. "Okay, I guess we're going in that direction, I'm all in." That's what leading is and that's what just happened to you in the sale.

Blair: Yes.

David: All right. That's the first one, selling is leading. The second one is change management. This one's not as obvious, but really fascinating. Change management is a metaphor for selling.

Blair: I think this might be the most powerful one. This was taught to me about 25 years ago. Someone said to me, her name was Pauline O'Malley Blair, "Buying is changing, selling is change management." Those two sentences together just basically changed my world. I think of all of the different metaphors here, the best playbooks for selling are probably the playbooks on change management.

There are different change management models that you can use and borrow from, you can mix and match and you can mix and match change management and leading and these others that we'll talk about and others that we won't talk about. That's what we do. We mix a bunch of metaphors, a bunch of models, and then you come up with your own unique blend of what the topic is, in my case, selling.

Back to selling is change management. If you study any model for how people change, you will see it as a series of steps that everybody goes through when buying. Now, the steps need maybe slightly different names, maybe there's some adaptation of the model, but the metaphor stands. If you look at the person you're selling to and you see them as somebody who is contemplating or planning change, then whatever methods you would use to help somebody change are effectively the same methods that you would use to help this person buy.

David: One of the things that I love about this particular one of the four metaphors is that if you recognize that selling is change management, you also recognize innately that the person that you're talking with has to sell to other people. You can give them the tools they'll need for the change management that they need to manage back at the firm because they're going to have some people to convince as well. You're not just talking to them, you're also giving them the tools to manage that change management internally.

Blair: That's a great insight, one of many, many insights that will dawn on you when you start to think of selling as something other than convincing. You see it as leading, you will have a significant number of profound insights around the implication of that. The same with change management and the same with the next one which might be my favorite one.

David: Listeners, if you've never done this, just for fun, I still like doing it, I don't know why, it's just interesting to me, but when you have a minute, go to a browser and just type, "Theory of change," and then click the image tab so that you're not getting text answers, get images, and you'll see hundreds, thousands of these things laid out. You will immediately be drawn to one or another of them, and just start thinking about that. Think about overlaying this little metaphor on what you do in terms of selling. The first is leading, the second is change management, and the third is parenting, but with a question mark. Why the question mark?

Blair: [laughs]

David: Are you nervous about something?

Blair: No, I just think it's so non-obvious. The reason why parenting came up is the most common metaphor that I hear in Win Without Pitching training, if I'm in a workshop, at some point somebody will say, "This is a lot like dating. Selling is a lot like dating." Usually what they mean is playing hard to get. I think dating is a valid metaphor for selling, but I don't think it's a particularly valuable one because there isn't a lot of surprise in it.

To me, parenting is a surprising metaphor for selling. Why would selling be like parenting? Because, and I talk about this in the post, sometimes the other party doesn't know what they want, isn't well-behaved, or they make unreasonable demands.

David: This is theoretical. You're not talking about your kids. This is other people's kids.

Blair: You think about a five-year-old throwing a tantrum, "I want this," or saying, "You're stupid," or whatever, they're having a fit, and the next line, it's also in the post, "Someone needs to be the adult in the relationship. That someone is you." That comes from my brother-in-law. My sister is constantly quoting her husband about this great line of parenting.

This realization that somebody has to act like the adult, and oh yes, that's you, that's helpful to me because I feel like a child who's never actually grown up, a child who's faking his way through adulthood. It's like, "Oh yes, I'm supposed to be the adult here."

I think selling expertise is more like that. It's like, "Okay, these are unreasonable demands. You're not behaving properly." Whatever it is, I think too often in any sale, particularly an expensive sale of expertise, we, the salespeople, defer to the client. If selling is leading, then we should be driving the next steps. We should be showing up with a framework. We should know what to say after hello. We should know all of these things. We should have a sense of objective of where we're going in this conversation. A child doesn't really have any of that. A parent should bring that to a parent-child relationship. You should bring that to a client-expert relationship in a sale.

I think it was a year ago or so, I checked in with you for some reason, just to see how you were doing, and you relayed to me that you were in a sales conversation with a client or a potential client about a year ago. Something wasn't going the way you would have wanted, and you said, "I need to be the adult in this relationship." I thought, "Oh, that's interesting." It's like a reference to this. This probably explains why you're better at sales than I am, because you have four kids and we have two, maybe.

David: [laughs] I'm twice as good?

Blair: Yes, you're twice as good at selling. I think parenting is a good metaphor for managing as well. The thing that stands out to me about parenting well is that you have to be courageous enough to make the important choices that have the long-term view in mind. I could say, "Yes, you can have this candy right now," but if I keep saying yes, what's your life going to be like? It's like somebody's got to have the big long-term perspective and view.

David: I love this one, the third one. The first was selling is like leading. Second, selling is like change management. Third, selling is like parenting. The fourth one is selling is like facilitating.

Blair: Selling is facilitating. Selling is helping. There's very little surprise in those two. The reason why this one really struck me recently, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a room full of-- a specific advisor type. Yes, it was financial advisors. We were talking about, "As an expert, you are a facilitator." I was telling them the story of, "I had bought a vehicle and I didn't tell my financial advisor." Then when I finally confessed--

David: Who's your financial advisor? Your spouse or somebody else? [chuckles]

Blair: Somebody we pay. He said, "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me you were going to buy a truck?" I said, "Well, I was afraid you wouldn't let me," or something like that. He said, "Blair, it's your money. I'm never going to tell you what to do, I would just lay out the options, different ways that you could have done this." I said, "Well, it's pretty straightforward. I don't see any way I could have done this." Then he told me what one of my options was and I went, "Damn, I should have called him."

[laughter]

David: You're paying him and you keep using him because you've come to believe that he has your best interest at heart. That doesn't mean he's always right. It doesn't mean he's going to be rude to you, but it is a valued opinion. In that context, it's like selling because it's facilitating what's best for you.

Blair: My point in bringing up the story originally to this group of other financial planners, I said, "At your best, you don't tell your clients what to do. You lay out your options and you talk about the pros and cons of each option and the trade-offs, and then you let them make a choice." That's exactly how you should think about selling, particularly the closing conversation. I'm now speaking to the power of options.

There are some types of experts where maybe in certain situations, you have to tell your client, "You need to do this." For the most part, most advisors, whether you're marketing financial services, whatever it is, your job as the outside expert or advisor is to lay out the options to the client, talk to them about the pros and cons. What we often say in training is, I'm fond of saying, "It doesn't matter how well you have conducted these conversations, you will never know all of the trade-offs that your clients have to make in making the choice that they make. Therefore, you should have no judgment in the options that you put forward in your proposal."

There is no right or wrong options. There's only trade-offs. Your job is not to convince them to select one over the other. Your job is to be the helpful expert advisor, lay out the options, talk about the pros and cons, facilitate a discussion, and respect the client's choice, whatever it is. No convincing, no coercion. Selling is facilitating.

David: I love the fact that you use the word "trade-offs" because that's the word I wanted to talk about a little bit. It's one of the things that's missing in our modern conversations, as a whole, in society. In a sales conversation, there are trade-offs. One of the ways that you can gain near instant credibility is to almost unsell by saying, "Now, here's the downside of what I'm recommending. Let's just make sure that we have all this laid out so that the decision that you make, it's still your decision, is as informed as possible."

These four, selling is like leading, selling is like change management, selling is like parenting, selling is like facilitating, how does this fit in the context of a metaphor, a perspective, a model? How does all that tie up together?

Blair: It starts with a metaphor, "This is like that." You start looking for metaphors. Take your domain expertise. What is it like? See if you can't come up with a bunch of different metaphors, see if you can't come up with some unexpected metaphors that therefore carry more information. Your metaphor can then be turned into a perspective, an overarching belief on how this should be done.

If I take selling is leading as a metaphor, my overarching perspective in my business-- and I have lots of perspectives, but the overarching perspective through which I create content, the lens through which I create content for my content marketing, is the idea that you can win without pitching. I'm fortunate my perspective is right there in the name of the business.

A perspective might be, selling is leading. I can take this metaphor and I could blow this up and I could make this the cornerstone of my business. My manifesto, instead of it being called the Win Without Pitching Manifesto, it might be called the Selling is Leading Manifesto, or if I was going to write a book on it, it would be called Selling is Leading. I'd be putting this belief, this ideology out into the world that selling is like leading. It's a powerful metaphor. I choose to make it a cornerstone of my business. I create content through this lens. I publish my manifesto on it.

Then out of our perspective almost always falls a way of working. I've already said a metaphor downloads the playbook. I could take a book on leadership, probably more correctly, I would ingest a bunch of different books on leadership and I would cobble together the best of them all, and I would create a model for how to sell. It would be called the Leadership Sales Model or something like that.

These three things we've talked before about the power of perspectives and the power of models, I simply want to make the point that not all perspectives and models are metaphors, but this is a logical starting point. Start looking for metaphors of the thing that you do. Your domain expertise is a lot like what? I would challenge the listener to come up with four, five, six, eight different metaphors and then start to play with them. How much information is contained in this metaphor? Does this imply a playbook?

I'll make the point that not all metaphors yield helpful models. If I said, "Selling is like quantum electrodynamics," it might be true to me, but a model reduces complexity. This is adding complexity. Unless you're a physicist, there's no immediate playbook that's already downloaded in your brain that you could reference. Not all metaphors are powerful enough to be perspectives or yield a model. Does that make sense?

David: Yes, this is such a great episode, but the flip side of that coin is, in my mind, I'm flipping through dozens and dozens of agency websites right now, and I'm not seeing these metaphors or these perspectives or these models.

There's so much room to do things that would really help us in this space. I'm not sure where it comes from. Where do we not have this freedom to just put our feet up and forget about client work for a minute and just think about what we do, how interesting it is, how unique it could be and how we could give people, just in a couple of sentences, a new way to think about how we-- We're not a design firm, we're not a coding firm. You fill in the blank and, all of a sudden, a light would come on. It just feels like there's so much room for improvement around this in our space, and I wish it would happen.

Blair: I know you're asking why. It's because we're still chasing utilization, probably. There isn't free time. Got to go bill those hours.

David: When there's free time, that's a bad sign. This has been great. Thank you, Blair.

Blair: Thanks, David.