Metaphors in Sales: How Language Transforms

When I first came to Maestro Group, I was immediately struck by the care people brought to their word choices. This isn’t unusual in my line of work—writing, editing, the teaching of writing—but it’s a quality I soon recognized as equally vital in the world of sales. Every sale, after all, consists of two people (perhaps solo, perhaps on behalf of larger organizations) moving in alignment toward a common goal. Conversations and messaging are the pathways to these fruitful connections.

Maestro generally advocates for simple, direct, and high-yield language habits, such as putting the “Bottom Line Up Front.” But there are also occasions that call for approaching language as an artistic medium, particularly if you’re a founder looking to inspire investors, or a leader looking to motivate others in your organization. In speeches and executive-level correspondence, sales professionals often need to wield the power of figurative language.

For the next month, I’m going to offer a poet’s tips to choosing phrases that not only resonate but transform. Consider this boot camp. (And, yes, if you’re wondering, “boot camp” is a metaphor. No actual sit-ups or rope climbs required.)

WHAT MAKES METAPHOR MIGHTY

In 1980, scientists Marta Kutas and Steven A. Hillyard staged an experiment to consider how the human brain experiences units of phrasing that culminate in a semantically unexpected word. These experiences are described in terms of ERPs (event-related potentials) that are tracked through EEG (electroencephalogram) readings. ERPs are coded in terms of post-stimulus onset, relevant electrode sites, peak reaction, and “positivity” or “negativity” (which describes value relative to a baseline).

What Kutas and Hillyard expected was activity on the P300 wave, which had been established as a zone of activity related to decision-making in response to incongruent or weird elements (the “oddball paradigm”). What they found instead was a distinctive and consistent N400 wave of signals, meaning that they are negative-deflection and usually peak 400 milliseconds after the presentation, in response to stimuli that complicate existing meaning in a constructive manner (e.g., visual and auditory words, sign language, and pictures). N400 is associated primarily with the left temporal lobe, with contributions from the right lobe as well, probably as an access point to semantic memory and plausibility. Scientists continue to debate whether processing metaphors requires an initial check-in on the literal potential of the language, or whether our brains can go straight to cherry-picking metaphorical relevance.

TL;DR. Here’s what you need to know: our brains demonstrate engagement specific to not just any surprise at the end of a sentence—a surprise, for example, that could be nonsensical in nature—but, rather, the semantic processing required by elaborating and figurative language. When you introduce a metaphor into your reader’s comprehension, you literally activate their brain in a different way. Some of this is conscious (“Wow, that’s poetic”) and some of this is synaptic in nature.

EVERY HERO NEEDS SIDEKICKS

I can’t introduce metaphor without talking about metaphor’s sidekicks, all of which fall under the general category of analogy, which is the comparison of one thing to another. Does this feel like a digression? I defer to the great Stephen King, a master of craft, who devotes a section to describing the importance of having a “Toolbox” in his 2000 book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

In the case of King’s childhood memory, the toolbox is a literal three-level behemoth weighing 80-120 pounds, used to fix a screen on an old house. While King balks, his uncle Oren handles the box with aplomb, and King ultimately reflects: “I want to suggest that to write to your best abilities, it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.”

When you’re communicating spontaneously, there are a couple of categories of figurative language in easy reach. Use them if they feel authentic to you. Here, I’d include idioms, which are culturally shared relics where word-by-word phrasing offers no clear justification or provenance (“it’s raining cats and dogs”). There are also dead metaphors, sometimes called lexicalized metaphors, where the original transformation has become so familiar—or the technology informing it so outdated—that people reach immediately for the secondary connotation (“he can’t hold a candle to you,” or, “she’s a broken record”). Note that some studies haven’t shown a pronounced N400 reaction to these types of high-familiarity metaphor; for better or worse, these constructions may function as straightforward language. 

Now, we’ve arrived at the doorstep of simile, a comparison that uses the linking language of “like” or “as.” People sometimes wrongfully dismiss similes as being weaker than metaphors, but that is misleading. As sidekicks go, simile is the most powerful one. Similes direct attention to their maker-ship, the brain behind the connection-making.

There’s a reason Homer was known for his epic similes! He was telling stories of classical conflict and myth that he knew others had told and would continue to tell—so his versions included uniquely beautiful suppositions, descriptions, and comparisons. The two Ajaxes become: “as two wine-coloured oxen straining / with even force [who] drag the compacted plow / through fallow land.” Other poets and historians would speak of the two Ajaxes, but only Homer calls them “wine-coloured oxen.”

The contemporary poet Carl Phillips makes a beautiful argument for the importance of simile in an essay titled “Community,” from the 2022 volume My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing. “At the level of animal instinct,” he says, “the ability to recognize likeness is a survival tool…In a way, simile—thinking via figurative language—becomes the way in which I narrow down possibilities in order to identify what may or may not be safe.” There’s noticeable and important vulnerability in the positing of how one thing relates to another, and the constructions of “like” or “as” hold space for that, just as they hold space for the recipient to (potentially) reject the comparison being made.

Use simile in moments where the impulse to transform, with your imagery, is counterbalanced by an explicit sense of humility about being the one to do the transforming.

GET CONCEITED ABOUT IT

This is probably apocryphal, but fashion designer Coco Chanel has been attributed the good advice, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.” I often feel this impulse when reading high-level correspondence and messaging that is reaching for a literary quality via metaphor: remove one of those bracelets! You don’t need it. Choose wisely.

The best metaphors are organic and operate on multiple levels, meaning that they illuminate beyond what was originally intended. That’s probably a little odd to ponder. You chose the metaphor; shouldn’t you be in control of its relevance? But trust your brain, which may be making connections you haven’t articulated openly yet. 

The N400-wave impact marks the cognitive effort needed to comprehend a metaphor, any metaphor, and the occurrence of that wave is not a universal good. Metaphors should be deployed strategically, because processing them marks a shift in mental energy. There have been specific studies that have explored what happens when a priming word is introduced, such as saying “sharp” or “spike” before metaphorically comparing someone to a cactus. Those studies show a lower impact on the N400 wave.

Here’s where I want to sing the praises of the conceit, which what we call it when figurative language is extended over the length of a longer work: a speech, a letter, or a poem.

Once you have chosen a metaphor, you can plant key words to that prime your audience for understanding (“spiky”; “cactus”), and extend the metaphor into a conceit (“spiky”; “cactus”; Mojave desert”). Has your choice of metaphor done all the work it can do? Push yourself toward deeper levels of understanding. Let’s say you brought in the metaphor of an hourglass. Have you thought about where the sand in the hourglass comes from?

Take the example of Apple, which was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs. He directed the original logo designed by Ronald Wayne, which shows a very prosaic image of Isaac Newton reading under a tree, right before an apple fell on his head, with a ribbon announcing “Apple” as a brand name. “Apple” equals gravitational and breakthrough theory, AKA, scientific progress. Yet the ultimate logo of today is an apple with a visible bite. That logo has a whole other set of connotations: Adam, Eve, and the “bite” of curiosity, which speaks to how many people cross over from the Windows world, by taking a chance on Mac products. I don’t think this was the original metaphor Jobs intended, but it is the most potent metaphor, and it took time to manifest.

In the coming weeks, we’ll hunker down in the playground of metaphor, looking at the pleasures (and perils) of some familiar figurative frameworks: battle, family, and nature.

Let us fill your metaphorical toolbox. Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co to find out more about our live trainings and self-paced learning modules.