The first step in overcoming client resistance, his blindspot, is to identify wh at lies behind it.

What is keeping your client or listener from literally seeing what you mean? There are two kinds of resistance: objective and subjective.The first kind you c an take at face value because it s based on fact. For instance, your client won t go forward because he hears you say you can deliver on the 12th, and he has to have delivery on the 10th. The only w ay to clear up his resistance is to find a way to deliver on the 10th. Or your client is operating under a simple misconception: He thought your firm was in the business of forging tools when ac tually you re in the business of packaging and delivering them. Again, you can set him straight rathe r easily. He s just got the facts wrong. The second kind of resistance, however what I call a conceptual blindspot is not so easily overcome. It s subjective, meaning it has its roots in emotion and won t be dislodge d with facts. For example, your client may have had a bad experience with a product similar to you rs and he cannot shake his conviction that all such products are profoundly flawed. His skepticis m won t be pushed aside by yet another explanation; it isn t based on reason. You need him to see your product in a whole new way, one which doesn t summon any of his resistance. You need to transport him from that place where he has dug in his he els to a whole new place, where he cannot bring his emotional baggage. You need to make your appeal to his right brain, in the right-brain language of metaphor, because that s where subjective resistanc e takes root and burrows deep.