Visualizing

There are many techniques that sales people use to close a sale. One of those techniques is to get the consumer to visualize themselves using the product or service that is being sold to them. For example, if you are purchasing a car, the salesman might ask you to picture yourself driving into work and everyone admiring your car. Or if you are buying a house, the agent might ask you to visualize Christmas morning in the living room. It's a very effective technique; so effective indeed, that Bush used it during his campaign.

It was subtle but being in sales and understanding all the different types of closes, I caught it immediately. I don't know if you recall this or not but after all of his debates and maybe even after his various interviews, he would look at the camera and swear the first few lines of the oath of office. What was he doing? He was getting America to begin visualizing him swearing into office. If they could visualize it in their heads, then they would vote for him. It was extremely ingenious of his campaign director to get him to do this.

Well, Barack Obama is doing something very similar. He is helping America visualize him as a world leader. And if they at least aren't convinced that he would be an excellent leader, he can at least convince them that he won't make an absolute fool of himself out there. He's very good at this. At some point in his campaign against Hillary Clinton, he stopped debating with her about his being the best one to be nominated and just moved on and began behaving as though the sale had already been closed. When you are looking at a car and the salesman asks you what color you want before you've decided you want to buy the car, that's assuming the sale is made. It can be effective, too. And that's what Obama did.

Obama is very very clever. I'm amazed at how smartly he is taking this away from his opponents. And that's what he's doing, he's taking it away. If lack of experience and Obama's ability to be a world figure is the issue, he's taking it by the horns and giving America the impression he can handle the job. He doesn't even have to be effective out there right now. All he has to do is get America to percieve he knows what he's doing. Which leads us to the last commonly stated marketing term, Perception is Reality. If the consumer perceives it to be true, then it doesn't matter if it isn't true because they are going to move forward as though it is true. Especially if there is a possibility that it could be true.

Yep. That Obama certainly knows what he's doing.