Have you ever used a mindmap during a sales pitch? Do you show people you meet for the first time your mindmap? Have you used mindmaps in meetings?
One of the first things people tell me when they learn about mindmaps and mind mapping is that this is something which can be valuable. Still, they would use it for themselves only and not in a group or during a meeting.
I can understand that. You may be a little uncomfortable because you do not completely master the mindmap method… yet.
Fast forward a few week, months or even years. I speak with my successful students and what do many of them tell me about mind mapping in a group? They don’t do it. They are often afraid of what the other person’s response or even thoughts might be.
There is fortunately a cure for this:
DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT!!!
Really… have a look around you. Most people try to do just enough not to step on the other person’s toes. As long as they are in line with everybody else they feel safe.
If there is one thing I learned, it must be that in order to reach your goals, you should not feel bad to step on some toes (as long as you make sure you don’t step on the toes of the people you need 
).
When you do that, you will become more successful, guaranteed.
Now back to public mind mapping.
The moment you create a mindmap during a conversation or meeting, people may look at you and don’t understand what you are doing.
I love these moments when I first meet someone and we are talking about working on a project. My mindmap is the ice-breaker in the conversation. It allows me to explain what I do (amongst other things) and give value to the other person at the same time.
A lesson I got from this: sales meetings and sales pitches don’t stay pitches anymore. They become conversations where we create a mindmap together!
What you need to do to make this work: PREPARE. You need to create a mindmap in advance with the outline of the pitch/conversation.
Afterward, you can send the mindmap to the other person (even take a picture with your phone camera) and both of you are up to date.
Take a chance. Mindmap in a public place. You never know how much you benefit!
Popularity: 24% [?]
Related posts:
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve limited success in getting interest from people when mind mapping in public. A few people have seen my mind map and have enquired as to the benefits of it.
The rest simply look at it, and then don’t ask. It’s hard to pinpoint their reasons for not asking. Some might be ignorant, some might be dismissal of my ‘doodling’.
But there might be another reason. Perhaps it’s those that don’t ask that are afraid.
Hi Matthew,
So true. Sometimes I think that it is fear of the unknown. Many people want to see, hear, experience and have more. But when it comes to it… they want to leave things the way they are, most of the time. Just as long as they know we are here to assist them when they do want to start mind mapping.
I use mindmaps (MindGenius 3) for creating sermon notes and then preaching from them. Most people have never seen mindmaps before and can’t understand how they work and even less how anyone could speak from them. (Sermon notes, when not written out in full, traditionally come in list form). On the other hand, they are all in their seventies and for most of them, computers are confusing enough, let alone notes that don’t go from top to bottom in black and white.
By contrast, our vicar is slowly beginning to be tempted into thinking she might try them. But she’s taking far longer to try mindmaps than Eve ever was to try the apple. Perhaps I need lessons in temptation. Anyone seen the evil serpent lately?
Hi Peter,
Perhaps the evil serpent could be that you don’t call them mndmaps and you just let the vicar break the sermon up into keywords that show the direction of the sermon for her. When she creates these words and some are not clear, you create second level keywords or images (preferable words – in my opinion). This way she is not learning & using a new technique but simply writing in short keyword notes her own thoughts.
Let me know if this helps!