Why use analogies and metaphors? Understanding!
Have you ever found yourself struggling to explain what a new technology enables to non-technical people (including some executives)? Did you ever get frustrated when they didn’t “get it?”
The “…a year’s research in the palm of your hand…” example (previous post) was the starting point for introducing a ground-breaking technology. We were offering systems that enabled scientists to complete the same number of experiments that traditionally consumed a full year in one to two weeks.
Our prospects often had a hard time embracing this possibility, so we generated and used a few analogies:
- “It’s like changing from hand tools to power tools driven by computer-aided design software.”
- “It’s like a large food market moving from a single check-out counter to having dozens. Your throughput increases and your customers are much happier when their wait time drops down to nearly nothing!”
- “It’s like a beverage maker upgrading from filling a single bottle at a time to doing 96 bottles simultaneously, including sealing and applying the labels. Think about how pleased the beverage team is going to be when they finish bottling in a single day vs taking weeks and how delighted their customers will be when those tasty beverages are made available more broadly!”
These analogies leverage existing concepts to make new ideas accessible. So, analogies and metaphors improve both retention and understanding. The next question is, “How do we put them together for our offerings and prospect situations?”
Next: Manufacturing Metaphors and Accumulating Analogies!
Resources:
The Power of Analogies and Metaphors in
Demos and Discovery Parts 1, 2, and 3:
Suspending Disbelief: A Collection of Sales, Presales,
and Marketing Stories (and Lessons Learned)
Doing Discovery:
https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/
Great Demo! Third Edition:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/
Visual Aids and Props:
https://greatdemo.com/remarkable-demos-what-makes-a-demo-truly-memorable/
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