Customer Reviews

Metaphorically Selling: How to Use the Magic of Metaphors to Sell, Persuade, & Explain Anything to Anyone

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Who knew selling could be fun? Learn how to use metaphors in making the sale. The book isn't just for people who do sales, but anyone who has to do any kind of persuasion even for marketing a one-person business. It's a surprise this book isn't better known as it's a superb, fun, and educational read.

Why not just buy a book on language or read up on metaphors? Miller uses examples of applying metaphors in business situations, something you won't find in metaphor-related books.

The book starts off with the "Sorry Seven," seven kinds of people who tend to put listeners to sleep. The book is divided into four sections. The first shows why you should use metaphors in making your case. They help appeal to both sides of the brain. Miller uses Robin Williams and Joe Friday to represent the right and left brains respectively. This is a clever way to remember which side of the brain is which in terms of telling (Joe Friday) and showing (Robin Williams).

Section two shows how to create effective metaphors with a four-step workout (no running involved). Section three is about applying the power of metaphors in the selling process. You've heard "Practice makes perfect" and section four is about practicing with the metaphors. In this section, Miller encourages becoming a clipper for clipping quotes and other gems. She also shares her valuable collection of quotes to get you started.

This book not only serves as an educational read that's as fluid as reading a work of fiction, but also as a reference and a workbook as the end of each chapter has worksheets to practice using metaphors.

First let me say I am not an author scatching another authors back (I don't know about you, but I don't even read reviews by other authors because they all reveiw each others books. It is much more helpful to me when I read a review from another salesperson, someone who is in the trenchs or came from the trenchs. I do not know the author, never heard of the author before this book, am not a fan, am not a student at some gurus feet. I am a guy trying to pay my bills and make a better life for my family. And I do it by selling.

I have been in sales and marketing for over 25 years. I have read enough books on sales to fill a library. Some good, most just raw material for confetti, with a few books that are great. I feel this is the most important book anyone in business or selling can read.

I have lost sales even though profit analysis and side by side cost analysis both dramatically reveal the supremacy of the course of action I propose. I go slow, get agreements all the way through, heads nodding, even agreement that they want to go with what I propose. And there are STILL cases where I am flabbergasted and frustrated because the deal doesn't close! Then I know - THEY JUST DIDN'T GET IT! Going slow, getting agreements along the way and my point went right over their heads.

I sell a service to physicians...and they are doctors, not business people. In fact that is how I found this book. I knew I had to find some method of better communication that would allow me to make critical points easy to understand by a lay person without loosing their power. Through searching on google I found a link to this book and the author.

The magic of this book is it immediately enables you to communicate powerfully and effectively with anyone about anything, and in a way that sticks in their mind and they REMEMBER. And in sales and business that is critical to success.

This is why I feel Anne Miller's book is the most important book you will read and this is a book that will put money in your pocket! You will sell more, period.

This book would be number one on my recommended reading list, the next 2 books on sales I would recommend after this are Value Forward Selling by Paul R. DiModica, and Never Cold Call Again by Frank J. Rambauskas Jr.
All three of these books are no b.s, practical, and most importantly, they work in the real world.

Thesis: Business people leave a lot of money on the table because they aren't able to communicate the unique value of their services. Strategic usage of appropriate metaphors helps solve this problem by giving the prospect a clear understanding of the value of your services.

Structure: 24 chapters spread over four sections:

1. The Case for Metaphor
2. Building Metaphor Muscle
3. Selling with Metaphors
4. Metaphor Maintenance

What are Metaphors, and When do You Need Them? (Ch. 2 and 3; pp. 13-26)
Metaphors are shortcuts to instant understanding through the use of powerful imagery. As Anne says on page 13, "Information + Metaphor = `I see what you mean!'" She provides real-world examples from famous figures and also includes practical worksheet tools (pp. 18-23) to help you start your way down the road to metaphor mastery. Chapter Three underscores the importance of using metaphors whenever you sense your audience slipping away from you.

Burners: Explain, Simplify, Reinforce Points (Ch. 15; pp. 87-97)
The more we talk, the less people listen. Brevity is the soul of wit, and Ann shows how this applies to sales. Use metaphors to produce simple, concise, and relevant points that will help you make more sales in less time.

Travel to Other Worlds (Ch. 23; pp. 137-139)
Anne uses this brief chapter to drive home the point that true metaphorical mastery means being able to use metaphors from different aspects of life and the world as a whole. For example, your sports metaphors may work wonders with many, but they certainly won't work for everyone. You need to expand your metaphorical horizons. A worksheet on page 139 helps you think about using different metaphors to produce similar imagery.

An excellent tool for our selling toolkit.

You might say that author Anne Miller is like a homeowner who strikes oil while digging a ditch in the backyard. In this book, she shares knowledge she refined from more than 20 years of distilling metaphors. Her book leaves little doubt that metaphors can fuel the engines of your sales success. Its pages are full of colorful, persuasive anecdotes and analogies that follow one another like racecars coming out of Turn Four at Daytona. If you doubt whether her advice will apply to the rubber-meets-the-road realities of sales, just take Miller's ideas out for a test drive. Her primary expertise is in presentations, not sales, which may explain why her roadmap (note the extended metaphor) to success is so much more creative than most sales advice. Miller's book leaves many other tomes in the dust. We think sales professionals who read this book and master the art of the metaphor should get ready to take a victory lap or two.

METAPHORICALLY SELLING is geared toward folks who do presentations, who need something to spice up that lame PowerPoint and make a sale. Its benefits go further than that: to anyone who needs to communicate--people writing marketing pieces, people doing interviews, students writing effective essays, ministers writing sermons--and many more possibilties.

Although most of us delight in using metaphors when we are trying to be witty, we don't realize how they can add effectiveness to everyday, mundane communication, especially when we have a point to make and few words to do it in.

Light humor (and a little sarcasm) make this book a pleasant read. It won't prepare an award-winning presentation for you, but it will get you thinking positively. Especially if you're learning the art of marketing, this will help.

-Mike Kelley,
Author of "Violent Night"

I saw a small write-up about this book in the newspaper. Intrigued by the title and encouraged by the review, I bought the book. I read through it despite not really enjoying it overall. It seemed real repetitive, unorganized and more or less, it is just a collection of metaphors with a little bit of narrative added to it. While it is a good basic book that you can reference if you are ever in need of a metaphor, if you are looking for a little more strategic use of language this is not it.

If you are in sales, a presenter, or someone who enjoys keeping listeners spellbound, you MUST read this book! Anne has captured the essence of the most powerful way to get your point across. I thought I was good with metaphors until I picked this up and realized I was just a beginner. The exercises help train your mind so metaphors become second nature. A practical, fun read that will put you in the league of the great communicators!

This book was recommended to me by Craig Valentine, a former World Champion of Public Speaking, and I am grateful to him for it. Even though I write extensively for a living (print, speeches and video), this book serves as a great primer or reminder of the ways we can make our messages "stick" better in the minds of our audiences. It teaches how to draw metaphors, symbols or analogies (pick one!) that will be meaningful to our intended receivers of our communication. In all, a worthy addition to the bookshelf of any writer or speaker.

Reading this book is like hitting a hole in one. Finding so much good advice and ideas in one book for sales is rare. I jotted down so many ideas pertinent to my clients I filled several pages! Her section on prospect blind spots is just so dead on target. Blind spots usually encountered are:

* Lack of understanding
* No urgency
* No differentiation between products
* Confusing value with price
* Fear of change
* Fear of large commitment
* No perceived value-add
* Fear of getting burned. Again.

Then she quickly gives you ways to communicate through the blind spots.

Ever heard of a Horse Chart? That's a PowerPoint where you have a picture/chart (say a Horse) with a title that says

exactly what it is (Horse). Nothing about the impact, effect or utility of the chart in the title. Instead of Sales use a title that talks to clients issues. ( Sales drop dramatically in the 3rd quarter)

A line I really enjoyed. " People simply can not imagine needing something they have not experienced - unless its explained in terms of what they know and love ."

This is a book for those sales and marketing people who want to kick down the doors and storm the castles of their reluctant prospects. In dong so you will be able to make more money than ever before.

Read Anne Miller's book not only to learn how to use metaphors to capture strong images for persuasion, but also to see how a good writer uses metaphors herself. For example, she revisits the familiar left brain/right brain theme, but christens the two halves Joe Left Brain, for Sgt. Joe Friday and "just the facts ma'am," and Robin Right brain for Robin Williams, the wacky inventive commedian. You'll never confuse the factual and creative sides of your brain again.