Clear as Mud or Crystal?

What language are you using with your prospects?

This isn’t a post about using English (good or bad), Spanish, Japanese etc. Nor is it necessarily related to the spoken word.

What I’m really asking is whether you are speaking to your prospects, customers and clients in a way they understand? Or are you confusing them with jargon and phrases that leaves them befuddled and bewildered?

I went out for a drink with a colleague and friend last week - it was the first time we have had a chance to chat properly in ages, even though he is in the next office to mine every day.

He was telling me that he was so busy that he was creating some new factsheets to be pdf downloads from his website (or sent by email), with an aim to cut down on the time he spends on the phone or email trying to answer the same basic questions. This would leave him able to become involved only when a prospective customer knows that

(a) they definitely want to proceed further with a project and

(b) they have a basic understanding of the time, financial and practical aspects of what is involved.

He has also taken on a part-time admin assistant and was showing these factsheets to the assistant. He was fascinated to discover that even words and phrases he thought were clear left his assistant confused and that his assistant threw up a whole load of new questions that needed answering in order to create really useful factsheets.

It happens in all businesses, especially when you become more and more experienced in your specialty. Suddenly you are talking a language that feels so natural to you but makes no sense to others.
 

In radio we’d talk about segues, cans, idents, links, traffic, back timing, faders… And when you start using these words around non-radio people you can see their eyes glaze over. Blimey, we must have been a dull bunch to go out with! Similarly, if you have been internet marketing for any length of time you probably feel comfortable talking about backlinks, no-follows, seo, broad match, hyperlinks, auto-responders, pay per click, web 2.0…..blah blah blah!

And to most new internet marketers that is literally what they hear - “blah blah blah”
 

Come back tomorow for Part Two of ‘What language are you using with your prospects?’….

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