If you are not ready to write a book, are you ready to write a metaphor on a cocktail napkin?
In the words of Alan Weiss, author of Million Dollar Consulting, “A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.”
The problem is to stop trying for cleverness and start looking for a simple metaphor.
Just like children, our prospects are attracted to pictures. When they understand them and see a solution to their problems, they’ll take action.
Using a metaphor on the napkin packs punch. Think of business metaphors like time is money, get up to speed, and float a loan.
Metaphors also can come from sports, games or even mountain climbing. To get your creative juices going, consider metaphors such as scaling Mount Everest, building bridges or mending fences.
Some others include slaying monster problems, David-versus-Goliath battles, cracking the code, a heroic quest, a comeback story, or even escape from Crazytown. Keep the metaphors simple.
“‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free,” says the Shaker song “Simple Gifts.”
Simple words to live by if you are in the business of selling your expertise. It is a gift to a prospect for an agency owner, professional or strategic consultant to be able to simply explain what they do. Maybe so simple it can be sketched out on a cocktail napkin.
“These are chaotic, transformative times,” says author and keynote speaker Theresa Rose. “People are distracted, burned out, and overwhelmed. It’s a lot to ask someone to sit through boring sales presentations or read lengthy proposals.”
The key for anyone in a revenue-generating role is to create a picture of their distinctive value so clear it can be drawn as a metaphor on a cocktail napkin. This simple method helps attract more high-paying prospects.
Rose says: “Why a cocktail napkin? Because sales happen everywhere—on airplanes, in hotel bars, or at neighborhood socials.”
She says look no further than Southwest Airlines, which is known as the business that started on a cocktail napkin.
As reported by Texas professor W.F. Strong, the story goes something like this. Two men walk into a bar in San Antonio. One grabs a cocktail napkin, draws a triangle and says, “Let’s start a business.”
At the apex of the triangle he wrote Dallas. The bottom left he labeled San Antonio. On the bottom right he wrote Houston. He said, “There—that’s the business plan. Fly between these cities several times a day, every day.”
And that is the legend of how Southwest Airlines began. (Strong says there is an old saying in journalism: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”)
Why don’t more agencies practice a simple approach?
“I find that it’s because the vast majority of professional services providers are unclear about what they really do,” says Rose.
When asked how they can fundamentally solve their clients’ problems, Rose says they drown in word salad and thought spaghetti, throwing every conceivable cliché against the wall, but they can’t explain it in 10 seconds or less.
“By the time they get to the juice, the moment has passed,” says Rose “We’re in content overload, and nonessential mumbo jumbo simply gets ignored.”