"What on Earth are you banging on about Mister?!"
A common mistake made by business (large and small) is to communicate in industry lingo.
This is fine, if you’re selling within your industry, but 9/10 times you’re not. Your either communicating to Joe Public or businesses outside of your sector.
Take these bullet points, selling website hosting – aimed at people just like you and me:
2,500 POP/Imap Email Accounts
SSH (Secure Shell), SSL, FTP, Stats
CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MySQL
2000/2002 Front Page Extensions
Here’s another example (if you’ve spoken to an Estate Agent recently, a few bells might ring):
“Yes, we have spoken to the vendor further up the chain and the mortgage indemnity issue is in hand. Before we exchange I am still awaiting answers to the queries your purchaser has raised namely; the restrictive covenant issue regarding the easements, and they are still requesting you undertake the Chancel Insurance”
To the industries in question, the above means complete sense and has total clarity. This is why it’s “hard for them to understand that they’re hard to understand!”.
But to people who don’t speak their language, they may as well be speaking in Latin (or Vulcan).
People like to do business with people they’re comfortable with and if they can’t understand you, this becomes very difficult.
Therefore, if all of your competition speaks in jargon, how much business do you think you could win if you’re the only one that speaks in a language your customer actually understands and is comfortable with?
A way to do this is to take your sales copy and give it to someone completely outside of your industry to read (please don’t be afraid to give it to a ten-year-old).
If they can understand it – you’re onto a winner. If they don’t, please go back to the drawing board.
Before I leave you, this communication breakdown happens to the biggest of the big boys as well (Google). Have a look at this post by Seth Godin and check out the video!
