More often than not if you want to communicate something that people ‘know and feel’ rather than simply ‘understand’, a visual is going to do that better than words. Words have fairly singular meaning and communicate directly whereas visuals are interpreted. And while they have the difficulty of being interpreted differently between individuals and contexts, a person’s interpretation of a visual is their own. It’s their own idea and they feel it implicitly.

Say you have something new and great, be it a business, a product, or an idea. Then take a blank slate, someone, who has never seen nor heard anything about your great new thing. When you tell them that it’s innovative or quality or right for them, they will understand but not necessarily trust you until they have experienced it firsthand.

But the attributes of it that you show them and the feeling they take from that will become their intuitive judgment of it. Then once they experience it for themselves their judgment will be either discounted or confirmed. Provided you were honest and realistic in what you showed them, you can hope that that judgment holds true.

In essence; when someone’s experience of your great new thing rings true to their expectations, then they know your assurances are true. When someone’s experiences of your great new thing align with their preconceptions of it then they know they were right. Tell someone something true and they trust you, show them something true and they believe you.

Your business, product, or idea is something you know inside out but when it comes to sharing it with others and taking it to the world, trust goes a long way and belief will take you everywhere beyond that.

We could all do to talk a little less and believe a little more.