Visual Perception, Sales Communication, Visual Storytelling
Visual Perception and Memory
Our visual perception is an ongoing, automatic, cognitive process of selecting, grouping and interpreting visual information (wiki). Familiar objects are instantly recognized and remembered as they are conveniently stored as complete objects in our brain.
A neuroscience example of the difference between remembering and constructing a memory is the
butcher on the bus; the butcher’s face is familiar to us, we know that we know this person instantly, even on a bus full of strangers because the memory of the butchers face is stored in our brain.
We don’t have the context, but we know the face and it takes time for us to think, recall and reconstruct the circumstance of seeing the face until we remember it’s the butcher.
The fundamental distinction between the two processes is that recollection is a slow, controlled search process of reconstruction, whereas familiarity is a fast, automatic process. A weak presentation forces the buyer to remember disjointed elements of your presentation to try and construct the meaning you are trying to convey.
Effective Sales Communication - Selling with Pictures
What makes a great sales presentation?
The most
effective presentations are sales communication events that successfully integrate simple yet memorable images with product value-creation and weave a story around the buyer condition. It's not about glitzy slides or bullets.
When we use Whiteboards to tell our story vs. PowerPoint bullets, we create simple
hand drawn images (that are immediately meaningful in the context of the discussion), interwoven into a story around issues that the buyer is potentially struggling to overcome.
The hand-drawn images themselves are meaningful and are stored in our brain and tie in the context of the story, relevant facts and proof-points. Perhaps this is one reason why people remember well constructed whiteboard stories months after experiencing them. The picture on the right tells a compelling story using images and just 7 words.
Visual Storytelling and The Hero's Journey Story Structure
We use a visual storytelling structure within our Whiteboard stories that loosely follows the
Hero's Journey to create contrast between "what is" and and "what could be" and engages the buyer in conversation around the challenges of the now.
The Hero's Journey from Nancy Duarte's Resonate
(click on the image to view an enlarged image)
The illustration is from Nancy Duarte's
Resonate and her book is highly recommended for a clear explanation and powerful examples of the Hero's Journey structure....and perhaps a moment of enlightenment when you realize that you have seen this structure countless times as it is used in nearly all great books and movies involving personal triumph.
These challenges of the now and the buyer condition can be easily illustrated on a whiteboard and the effective salesperson will engage the buyer in discourse on "what-is" prior to presenting an opportunity to change their approach and adopt your solutions or product/service to produce a favorable result
and future value.
In a
WhiteboardSelling Enablement Symposium, everyone on the customer-facing team learns to tell the story and draw the whiteboard. With practice, any salesperson can drastically change the ratio of presentations leading to a sale using the above structure and well developed presentation.
