The Way Forward Is To Frame Forward

There’s something terribly wrong with your business, your flagship product, and your team.

I know this, because nothing is perfect.

But no one wants to buy a barrel of rotten apples. And your barrel is no different than anyone elses. It’s really not. The only thing that’s different between barrels is how people see them. It’s perspective. And the people that sell a lot of apples. They have a great perspective.

They create imperative. They create a frame, and inside that frame everything is good. It’s where everyone wants to be. It’s where everyone needs to be. The frame is always open to new opportunity.

Building A Frame That Takes Your Company Forward

To create a positive frame that moves you forward, you have to tell a story. The story is already there. You just need to find it. And the way you find it builds a case for moving forward. The way you find it teaches you to believe that you can move forward. There are 3 steps to building your story frame:

1. Values

The values equal the impact of the results. The values relate a common belief that everyone can understand. “Pollution control is good for our environment”. That’s a value. It opens our story with something that everyone can relate to and the conclusions are natural ones.

2. Context

Through the context, you create the percieved results. The context is the situation at hand. “Coal fired powerplants are putting millions of tons of pollution into the air we breathe everyday”. It’s what’s happening. It’s the context of our story.

3. Issues

The issues are our deliverables. They’re the actual results. The core issue is what your story is here to achieve and it defines a specific course of action. “Our wind power generators are pollution free”.

How Positive Framing Is Used By Successful Leaders and Salespeople

You can see by the frame I created that it’s a good solid frame. It makes sense. OUTSIDE of the frame, windmills have some negative attributes. Like everything else, they’re not perfect. They’re expensive, they require specific windy locations, they’re a hazard to birds.

Inside the frame are the positives. INSIDE the frame, we can understand with great clarity that this needs to go forward. That it should and that it can.

Framing gets a bad rap because politicians tend to abuse it. But it’s purpose is:

• To see problems as an opportunity to create innovative solutions.
• To run towards something good, rather than away from something bad.
• To open the door to new opportunities.

With positive framing you can separate yourself from the competition. Motivate your people. And you can see that even though your flagship product isn’t perfect, it’s more perfect than not.

It gives you a way forward.