If a good picture is worth a thousand words, then a few good pictures could save you a lot of time and talk. When we speak of images, we don’t refer exclusively to printed images but to images in the mind as well.

Pictures formed by the imagination of your clients are exceedingly more powerful than any picture you could show them. You help to paint these pictures in their imagination with provocative questions about their life and experience with entertaining and interesting stories, and by the application of relevant metaphors.

The pencil may be your most powerful selling tool! If you know how to use it, that is. A presenter who know how to integrate the drawing of images and outlining of ideas into his or her client presentation is like a teacher before a captive class.

I have studied the dynamic shift in attention level and body language when the pencil on paper technique is used. If the audience had been leaning backward, they are now leaning forward. If their eyes were starting to drift or gloss over, they are now drawn to the pencil’s movements and the logic and lessons it brings.

I have watched advisors draw pyramids, houses, cars, chairs, trees and a plethora of other analogies for the plan they are developing and the philosophy on which it is based. The analogy doesn’t matter as long as you can make it relevant. The audience participates like students. They will point to the analogy on the board at different junctures and refer back to it. By using this method, the presenter is able to establish a ‘language’ with which their client’s right brain can connect.