As a writer, one of my goals for this year was to use more stories and real-life examples in articles. The challenging part was coming up with a story or example that tied in with the rest of the article. One of the pros at this is Michael Katz of Blue Penguin Development and I’ve been studying his weekly newsletter to learn from him.

We hand out candy on Halloween. Sounds boring with no chance of becoming a story in an article? Michael did it. The funny thing was this Halloween was the first time I didn’t have to do the running-to-the-door-and-grabbing-the-candy-bowl on the way business. My 11-year-old son shocked us when he said he was too old for trick or treating. This guy loves candy more than his older sister who was trick or treating with her teen friends long pass age 11.

Not only that, but my seven-year-old had the flu, so my husband was home to help, too. Between them covering the door, I had the whole Halloween night off for the first time since we moved in our house.

I grew up in a neighborhood where most kids were the same ages as my 10 years older  siblings, so few kids came to our door. Our neighborhood made my childhood neighborhood look like country living (Fort Worth) as the doorbell rang too many times to count. During the early years, I loved standing by the door ready to open it to see what surprises appeared on the other side of the door. Creative costumes, creepy costumes and teens faking it costumes.

In the past few years, my enthusiasm dropped. The doorbell’s constant interruption left me with little I could do between ringings except for reading magazines. When you do something long enough, it turns into a bore that all the costumes — good and bad – blur.

That happens to business professionals, too. They call, they present, they meet. They can do everything right and fail to capture interest from the party on the other side of the phone call, table or desk. Like answering the door on Halloween and losing interest in the costumes, they have heard and seen it all before.

Author of Metaphorically Selling Anne Miller shares over 50 stories using metaphors, stories and examples to shake resistance and close deals in Make What You Say Pay! The diverse examples in the book cover speeches, greeting cards, elevator speeches, new concepts and more. The book has a simple layout: the story followed by Miller’s short commentary on the story and why the metaphor worked.

Not only does the short, fast read offer examples from different situations, but also uses a variety of metaphors. So no expecting a book filled with the oft-used sports metaphors. Because of the diversity of situations and metaphors, most people can benefit from the book. A developer can get ideas on how to explain technical concepts. A small business can get ideas on how to thank clients for their business.  A finance employee can get ideas on how to convert lifeless numbers into meaningful ones.

Miller sorts chapters by topic to simplify finding the right stories that fit your situation. Need to grab attention? Convince them to get on board? Stand out from the crowd? Miller includes all of these and more.

The only slight weakness is the commentary. First, all of it is in italics. Italics aren’t meant for paragraphs. Its job is to highlight short points, book titles and the like. Some feels forced, like you have to include commentary, but the story says it all and any commentary would be just repetition. The commentaries are one or two paragraphs, so they don’t take up much space. The value is in the stories. In fact, I wish there were more stories and examples. Miller invites readers to submit their stories and she plans to publish them as long as they keep coming.

Make What You Say Pay! belongs in the professional’s reference library. Almost every business professional can punch up business with a story or metaphor. Miller’s book will help find that metaphor so you’re not stuck using the needle in a haystack analogy again.

Title: Make What You Say Pay! The Language That Opens Minds, Closes Deals & Wows Crowds
Author: Anne Miller
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 1450583873
ISBN-13: 978-1450583879
Date: July 2010
Format: Paperback
Pages: 164
Cover Price: USD: $14.95 Amazon: $13.45

FTC disclosure: Reviewer received copy from publisher, which had no influence on the review.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Wow! The game is the same for both PC and Macs. This week’s game has a recently-released sequel. If you end up liking Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect, check out Flux Family Secrets: The Rabbit Hole Collector’s Edition. Note this is the more expensive edition. The cheaper one will come out sometime soon — date unknown.

PC Catch of the Week: A mysterious family has contacted you and holds the secrets of your past! Fix the errors in time in this exciting Hidden Object game and take your rightful place in the Flux family! Explore famous historical sites like Hatshepsut’s tomb, the Wright Brothers’ workshop, Benjamin Franklin’s study and many more. Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect has you realign the timeline by finding misplaced objects scattered through time and solving clever puzzles.

Catch the deal for your PC! Use coupon code CATCH299

Mac Catch of the Week: Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect.

Catch the deal for  your Mac! Use coupon code CATCH299.

This $2.99 Catch of the Week runs through Sunday, July 11 at 11:59pm.

Playfirst Original Games for $6.99. Expires December 21.

Save 50% on all downloadable Mac Games from PopCap.com

Five Cake Mania Games for $19.99.

10 Reflexive Games for $54.99.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Summer’s here and it’s time for some fun! Whether you’re on vacation, or just want something new to play, Astraware(R) has the solution – the Astraware Hot Summer Sale!

Starting on 1st August, Astraware is offering 25 games each with at least 25% off the regular price. Several of the games are as low as $9.95 each!

If you’re looking for action games like Platypus or GTS World Racing, strategy titles like Westward or Tradewinds 2, word games like Bubble Babble, or favorite classics like Astraware Sudoku – they’re all included with special prices for a limited time! The Hot Summer Sale only lasts until midnight on 17th August, so make sure you don’t miss out.

For all the details and to bag yourself a bargain, visit the Hot Summer Sale page at: http://www.astraware.com/promo/summer08

• SalesDogs Diagnostics: What type of salesdog breed are you? What kind of team do you have?
• Stationery Movie Quiz: Guess the movie from office supplies.
• Good Keywords: Free software for finding the right keywords. Also has a keyword primer for beginners.
• Get kid gift ideas by checking out Dr. Toy’s Best Products of 2007.
• We keep our lawn (front and back) as simple as possible. That way we don’t use up much water or resources to keep it in good shape. LessLawn provides tips on building a low-maintenance lawn.
• The 100 Tools Freelancers Can’t Live Without

The Pitchers: Sales

Let’s say you have a new baseball team in town and it’s almost time for the first game of the season. Your sales force is ready to sell a variety of package deals for the season. However, there’s a major stumbling block as they prepare to approach potential buyers. No one knows about the package deals or even the date of the first game.

No one tipped the local sports writer or the local TV news of the upcoming grand opening game. What happened to the marketing department? There’s no marketing research, no publicity, and no idea where to begin targeting sales. Sales will flop and will make the sales department look bad, but it’s marketing’s fault since they didn’t do their job.

The Batters: Marketing

Let’s switch and see things from the marketing team’s view. They do a grand job of posting banners of the first game in town. Marketing has pulled together piles of reports with data on the audience, their baseball attending habits, and game spending habits. Many people arrive for the game opener, buy a ticket for the game, and it’s successful.

Or is it really? The sales team is invisible. There is no one to build a relationship with the fans. No one has sold them packages for attending more than just the opener. Sales could go far beyond than one game. They could even help build relationships that go beyond the season. Marketing did a great job, but with poor sales the team may not make it and everyone loses. Where was sales when marketing promoted the event?

Who gets the credit? Who gets the blame? In the war for profitable bottom line, turf issues should be put aside.

Who’s on First?

Marketing and sales play for the same team in different positions. Marketing leads to sales by creating programs focused on direct marketing principles that are tied to the sales team’s success. Marketing puts together a multi-step game plan to ensure each interaction with prospective fans lead to more and deeper interactions. Using shared business goals as a driver, the two work to meet those goals.

Marketing and sales should constantly communicate with each other to ensure effective timing, clear understanding of the company’s message, and smoother handoffs. Sales can determine the target market by evaluating current and past sales. The results help marketing professionals sharpen their pitch so they can hook the right people.

I love the Metaphor Minute newsletter from Anne Miller, author of Metaphorically Selling. Each issue comes with a short example of how to use metaphors in business and presentations. The latest issue shows how someone finally got her point across using fishing as the metaphor:

Corporate executives who cling to the old “dialing for dollars paradigm drive me crazy – especially if they want their reps to crack into corporate accounts. In today’s business environment, it doesn’t work. But for some strange reason, my repeated attempts to correct their errors in judgment falls on deaf ears. It’s like they have a total blind spot in their brain about this matter.

How can I make these idiots understand? I’d ask myself. Clearly logic wasn’t working. It took some serious thinking, but I finally figured out how to get it through their thick heads that new sales strategies were needed.

But first, a bit of background: I live in Minnesota – “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Fishing is a hugely popular sport here, even in the dead of winter. Our hardy outdoorsmen drill holes in the ice and sit in little shacks in the middle of the lake for hours on end. If you’ve seen the Grumpy Old Men movies, you know what I mean.

The decision makers I was talking to understood fishing. So I created a metaphor that helped them understand why their salespeople were struggling. Here’s essentially what I said:

Bob, you’re telling me that you want your sales reps to reel in the big ones, right? But you also said you’re extremely frustrated by their lack of success. In fact, you’ve been unable to hire people who are capable of doing this.

(Bob nods his head, agreeing with me.)

Selling today is a lot like fishing. Every lake has its trophy fish and all the anglers are out to catch it. But my chances of catching this lunker are pretty slim if I’m not a savvy fisherman. As you know, here are so many things you need to take into account if you want to be successful:

For example, what kind of fish do you want to catch? Is it a catfish, walleye, muskie or sturgeon? Or perhaps you want to go dolphin fishing – in which case you should be on the ocean.

What about the bait? Should you be using minnows, worms, frogs or artificial lures? And what size should your bait be?

Then what about the appropriate equipment? Will you have access to a boat or not? If so, is it a canoe, yacht, bass boat or rowboat? How about your rod & reel? How thick should your line be? Will you be casting, trolling or sitting still? Do you have a depth finder?

What type of environment are you fishing in? Does your trophy fish prefer deep pools, shallow waters and lily pads or hiding under rock piles. Since we know that fish behave differently if its 80 degrees and sunny versus a frigid -10, what are the weather conditions?

Am I not right that you go through all this thinking just to try to catch a trophy fish? (He nods in agreement.)

Bob, like I said earlier, selling is a lot like fishing. You can’t expect your people to be successful reeling in the big ones if you just send them out to the lake and tell them to keep casting. It doesn’t work that way.

Bob finally got it! Why? Because I related selling to something he loved and understood.

c.2007, Anne Miller, author, “Metaphorically Selling,” amiller@annemiller.com

How have you used metaphors or creativity to get a point across or in a presentation?

Yesterday, I received an email from a company looking to do work for me. Items in quotes are directly from the email. Non-quoted items are my comments.

I apologize for intruding into your busy schedule. Please allow me to introduce ourselves.

Polite, but already off to a negative start. Says he is intruding. It might be better to say something along these lines: “I’m sure you’re very busy, so I’ll keep this short and to the point.”

We feel that your website can be improved substantially in terms of design, and shall be happy to undertake this for you.

Insult followed by the company’s delight in taking on my lousy site so it can get business for itself. “Substantially” makes my site sound like something leftover from the ’90s. Why would I want to hire a company I never heard of that’s already insulting my site without ever seeing it? This line is generic and the email is obviously a template. Oh, it doesn’t even address me — just says, “Hi”.

If it’s the truth — I appreciate the honesty as I’m always grateful when someone catches an error or typo here and lets me know. Perhaps, it would help to point out specifics to show why my site needs help. “The red doesn’t work because it comes across as such-n-such. The navigation needs a lift because of this.”

The next few paragraphs goes into the technologies covered, how smart and talented the employees are, and where the company is located — to clearly point out its ability to do cheap labor.

I love this, which appeared in the disclaimer after the person’s name:

Please note that we have not purchased your e-mail address from any commercial source. We have accessed it through primary research on the internet.

Yeah, and yet there is not one iota of information in the email showing the company did its research except find out my email address, which isn’t hard.

I looked at the web site and check out the portfolio. Half of the web sites look like leftovers from the ’90s. The other half resembles my site — basic, clean design. I wonder how the company would “improve” my site. If I had money to burn, I’d hire the company for kicks and see how it plays out.

The site claims it validates W3C HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS. HTML, yes. CSS, no. Tables everywhere. This site uses XHTML and CSS for layout. I give the company credit for one thing — there’s no mention of content work. Just reading the site’s contents, you know this isn’t a company you want to hire for writing content.

Networking experts suggest doing research to find the right companies and the right person to contact. But when you do make contact, what do you say? You don’t want to start a relationship with a total stranger asking to take on work. Think of how you would build a relationship. Offer an email newsletter or offer to send a free report — something you can give them for free.

I still can’t picture cold calling (specific people) and trying to start a relationship. Maybe it has to do with my not being a natural telephone user. That’s why I appreciate online networking.

Making Online and Offline Connections looks at how the virtual world changed how we connect to others. In it, I state that the online world made it possible for me to become a full-time freelancer. It got me thinking how I met people in this virtual world.

I met a few through blogs, especially in earlier days. We bloggers left comments or sent emails to each other. Over time, we learned about each other and became friends. Another is a client who became a friend. I found the client because I interviewed (by email, of course) a co-worker of his who connected us.

Two other clients come from referrals from someone I met on the Internet; one through his own blog and the other from working on a Web site together. IVWCC, an online networking group, also brought in more clients and friends.

I completed an online certification program at New York University. One of the professors asked me to be his TA (teacher assistant). Eventually, I lost the job because there were not enough students enrolled in the program to warrant a TA as a result of the dot com crash. Over a year later, NYU contacted me again (a different program) because someone from the previous program recommended me.

A recent gig came from the editor’s using the search engine to find me. He did a great job because my experience fit well with what he needed. I’ve also gotten gigs by replying to online ads.

Obviously, the Internet offers many routes for meeting people and finding gigs (emphasis on gigs as the chance of finding a full-time job is only about 8% as reported in a career-related column). Possible ways to meet others online:

• Blogs: Leave a comment and link to another person’s entry from yours.
• Forums and email mailing groups: Join discussions.
• Email newsletters: I respond to all emails and survey responses. I’ve also connected with people with their own newsletters.
• Online groups: Like IVWCC. Or you might be one of many bloggers like Blogcritics. The site also has a mailing list for its writers and editors.
• Website: One that’s content-rich and frequently updated (this is where a blog or blogging-tool can help). Even having a profile in Amazon can lead to meeting people. People have contacted me that way even though I haven’t quite made it into the top 1000 reviewers list.
• Emails: Contacting people. Email a writer to pay a compliment on an article. Email a business to congratulate on a recent success. Many business people write articles and include their bylines.
• Articles: This is the flip side of emails. One of my first freelance gigs came from a guy who contacted me based on an article I wrote. There, I met another editor and we recently connected and helped each other (she submitted an article for one of the newsletters I managed and I answered interview questions for her blog). I’ve got a huge list of article banks. Need to post them here.
• Chats: You might attend a chat where there’s a guest. Usually chats are secondary — meaning you meet the person some other way before you talk in instant messenger.

You never know who you’ll meet through the Internet. Just interact with the virtual world and enjoy the surprises that come your way.

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.

Title: Metaphorically Selling
Author: Anne Miller
Publisher: Chiron Associates
ISBN: 0976279401
Date: December 2004
Format: Paperback
Pages: 168
Cover Price: USD: $14.95 Amazon: $10.17