When Your World Must Change – The Picture Must Change.

Statistics suggest that 70% of us are visual in how we take in information. I prefer to think of it that we are all 70% visual. Social scientists would tell me that interpreting that initial number in the second way is wrong but, oh well.

The bottom line is that if we want to understand something at a deeper level, I believe we need to learn how to draw it out, graphically.

I was in a conversation recently coaching a sales manager whose company had just been purchased by an outside firm. And the new sales model was very different than the old one. I asked him if he had ever explained the differences to his team. He said he had, and that it wasn’t taking root.

I then ask him if he’d ever drawn the old and new process out – side by side.

“Why would I do that when I’ve told them over and over and over?”

Well, it’s like my wife’s tennis coach says, “If your game isn’t working, change the game.”

His verbal clues weren’t working primarily because that’s left brain stuff – and it’s leaving out 70% of our ability to consume. When you’re trying to influence someone to change their entire approach, you have to change the picture for them. And there’s no better way to do that than to illustrate the old and the new, side-by-side.

John Wooden, the famous UCLA basketball coach who won 13 NCAA titles in a row, used to say that when he was teaching a player how to do something differently, he would teach it in the old way and then the new way, side-by-side.

That way, the player could understand and feel the difference. Right brain stuff.

I don’t think we in sales or leadership use pictures nearly enough. So if you’re a sales leader trying to make your point to a salesperson – or a salesperson interested in making a point to a potential prospect, draw it out. Get their right brain engaged. Get your right brain engaged.