|
|
Why plain talking means plain sailing every time
So here we are. 2009. A bright, shiny new year to play with. Kick the tyres, walk around, get on in.
Let’s take it for a ride.
And on the way, we can chat about New Year’s resolutions. Oh you haven’t made any?
Well how about this? Tell it like it is. Write like you talk. Say what you mean. And mean what you say.
In a year that’s likely to see credit crunched even harder, more businesses going to the wall, and belts tightened even tighter, telling it like it is might give you the edge over the competition.
It’s not that hard. Really.
Froth to go
Doublespeak is everywhere. And even the coolest, funkiest, hippest companies are not exempt.
A while back, I talked about Starbucks wasting 23m litres of water every day. And their response was as insubstantial as their cappuccinos:
“We recognise the opportunity exists to reduce our total water usage. Starbucks’ challenge is to balance water conservation with the need for customer safety.”
Well they’ve done it again. The story was simple: in 2009, they said, their sales would fall.
Add an extra shot of gobbledygook to that, and some sugar-free spin, and you’ve got:
“Any resulting decreases in customer traffic or average value per transaction will negatively impact the company’s financial performance as reduced revenues result in sales de-leveraging which creates downward pressure on margins.”
So let’s précis that. Sales. Will. Fall.
Never mind the quality – feel the width
Why do we do it? And yes, at times, we all do it – hide behind grand-sounding phrases, and double-decker words.
The credit crunch is a perfect example. ‘Collateralised debt’ is simply debt that nobody understands or can track back to the source. ‘Highly leveraged’ means in debt – lots of it. And ‘highly geared’ doesn’t mean you have a BlackBerry and an iPhone.
It just means that you’re in debt. Lots of it.
Often, we use doublespeak to hide mistakes. In June 2000, the Millennium Bridge opened in London. The futuristic metal footbridge linked Tate Modern, on the south side, with St Paul’s, on the north.
Within hours, it was closed. It wobbled – badly.
Eight years later, a study carried out by Bristol University showed that the problem was caused by:
“the presence of lateral bridge motion without changing the pedestrian walking frequency and applying the same foot placement strategy to maintain balance”.
Translation: it wobbled.
The designers got it wrong. They made a mistake – but they’re passing it off on the pedestrians whose ‘foot placement strategy’ was at fault. Well that’s all right, then.
Doublespeak makes a bad problem worse. You get something wrong, then you try to talk your way out of it. And your customer, your friend, your wife, your husband, the person whose car you’ve just pranged – all of them will think less of you because of it.
Next time you make a mistake, try this approach:
I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll try better next time.
(It works, really. I should know.)
Plain talking – and that means plain writing, too – sends an immediate signal to the person you’re talking to: you can trust me.
And in 2009, we need all the trust we can get.
Happy New Year.
Lighten up and they’ll love you
Big companies are serious companies – right?
Well yes. Some of them are. They hide behind corporate logos, and style guides, and copy that strikes ‘just the right tone’.
Except that sometimes, it’s just the wrong tone. It makes them sound cold and distant, and puts a barrier between them and their (potential) clients.
So why do they do it?
Because business, they think, is a serious business. There’s no place for levity.
But there is.
I think therefore IBM
Think IBM and you think ‘Big Blue’. Dullness reigns. Except it doesn’t – at least not in their television commercials.
I’ve just been chuckling at their latest series of ‘Stop Talking, Start Connecting’ ads. They’re dealing with serious issues (security, business resilience, energy efficiency, globalisation) but they’re doing it in a humorous way.
Which means they get your attention.
‘Hey,’ you say to yourself, ‘maybe business resilience can be fun.’ (OK, well maybe that’s stretching it – but you get the idea.)
Not taking yourself too seriously is a great way of making sure people don’t switch off. UK smoothie company Innocent Drinks uses it very effectively in all their copy. The tone is sweet, appealing and funny.
In a word, innocent. What better way to build their brand?
You smile. They smile.
Microsoft does the same thing in its latest Windows advert with Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. It’s been slated by the critics, but it’s actually quite funny.
It’s not going to win an Emmy, but it does show the company has a sense of humour – and that’s important, when your (ex-)CEO’s got a reputation as the world’s richest geek.
Showing the human side of business is always a crowd pleaser. And nothing works better than laughing at yourself.
I should know – once, for a dare, in front an audience of 1,000, I dropped my trousers. And then, for the next 20 minutes, I did my presentation in my (Microsoft Office) boxer shorts.
As you can imagine, I had their total attention.
Find out more:
- Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld try out some Size 10s in the Shoe Circus advert (be sure you don’t miss Bill wiggling his boxer shorts).
- IBM sees the funny side of life with its Stop Talking, Start Connecting ads.
Help your audience dodge those bullets
We’ve all experienced the famous ‘death by PowerPoint’.
It’s a painful process: slide after endless slide, oceans of text (usually in a tiny point size), and enough bullets to wipe out an entire regiment.
It’s stressful enough standing in front of people without having a presentation that works against you. So here are some tips to cut it down and liven it up:
- Don’t use PowerPoint as a script: If all you do is read word-for-word off the screen, you might as well sit down and let the presentation run by itself.
- Limit the number of bullets: keep it to six maximum, or fewer if you have lots of sub-points. Go to the back of the room when you’re rehearsing and see if you can read everything.
- Hold something back: don’t give everything away on your slides. Consider animating your points so they follow your presentation, but don’t go wild or it will affect readability. Try using consistent animation on all slides.
- ‘Chunk’ information: break it down into manageable bits, which are arranged logically. Remember, your audience is reading your slide and listening to you, so make sure it flows smoothly.
- Split it up: sometimes, there’s just too much information for one slide, even after you’ve edited, chunked and deleted. Consider splitting one slide into two. The information will be much easier to digest.
- Preview, review: it’s always a good idea at the beginning of a presentation to set the agenda. And at the end, it’s useful to wrap up with a summary of what you’ve covered. That way, the audience is in no doubt about your message.
OK, example time. Here’s a slide that breaks all these guidelines:
And here’s the same information spread over two slides, but radically cut down. I’ve also changed the template to make the copy more readable:
See the difference?
The first slide holds nothing back: it’s a stream of consciousness. The second two are short and concise, and don’t give everything away. Which means the audience is left wanting more detail.
And they’ll get it – from you.
Why doing nothing is easier than doing something
Are you throwing money away? I am. For months now, I’ve known that I could get cheaper broadband.
In these trying economic times, every penny counts – and we’re talking about pounds here. I know I could do it, and that I should do it. So why don’t I just go ahead and do it?
Simple. I’ve decided to opt instead for your biggest competitor – and mine.
Buyer inertia.
For given a choice (or two choices, or a bewildering, never-ending, ever-widening array of choices) we often just do the easiest thing.
Which is nothing.
Dollars and sense
A while back, I did some work for a client whose entire business is built around saving companies money by finding them better deals on gas, electricity, phone and other utility costs.
He charges a percentage of their savings. And he’s thriving, with an ever-growing army of staff.
But why, I asked him one day, don’t these companies simply do it themselves? After all, they’re smart, they’re successful and they know they have a choice of suppliers. So why use him?
“Because they’re like you and me,” he said. “They don’t like change, and they don’t like making decisions. So they do nothing – until we make them do something.”
Money for nothing
UK price comparison site moneysupermarket.com recently carried out an experiment to see just how strong the pull of buyer inertia was.
In London and Manchester, they had somebody walk around wearing a sandwich board offering people £5. No strings, no catches. All you had to do was ask.
In total, they encountered 1,800 people. And how many do you think took up the offer?
28.
That’s less than 2%. So a whopping 98% of people passed up the chance for a free fiver. I’m sure I’d have been one of them. Wouldn’t you?
You are now leaving the comfort zone
Buyer inertia will never go away, but we can do something to change the odds in our favour:
- Always have a call to action. It’s obvious, but we so often forget it. Call now. Fill in the form. Don’t delay. Tell people what to do – you’ll be surprised what happens.
- Close the sale: making a sale is not like speed dating. If the person says no, it’s nothing personal. But if you don’t ask, you’ll never know. So ask.
- Say it often enough. As Woody Allen said, 80% of success is just showing up. If you’re not there, you won’t get the business. So show up again and again. And again.
My email has just pinged with another message about a great broadband deal.
Decision time – or maybe not.
I’ll have to think about it.
The little word that makes a big difference
Want people to read what you write? Of course you do.
Then talk to them directly. You may not know their name, but they all have one thing in common: they’re all called ‘you’.
Recently, I saw this sign at a local supermarket. It stopped me in my tracks. I’ve probably seen thousands of fire-exit signs in my life, but I’ve never given them much attention.
Until now.
This one made me pull out my phone-that’s-really-a-camera and take a picture.
One day, I thought, it might be me trapped inside that burning building, scrambling to get past a woman with a trolley filled with Coke and thick-crust pizzas, and a man arguing about money-off coupons while thick, acrid smoke billowed around us.
You. It’s such an obvious tactic to use, that we often overlook it.
At my gym, there’s a list of 10 ‘rules and regulations’ (what’s the difference, exactly?).
One says: the male members shall wear a training top.
Quite apart from the unintended innuendo, there’s the imperious use of ‘shall’. I’m tempted to strip off just to see what happens.
The notice is signed (inevitably) ‘The Management’.
And here’s the thing: never once does it say you. So the tone is cold, distant, and bossy. I’m likely to make a note of the rules simply to remember to break them as often as possible.
If you want people to take notice, try these three things:
- Keep it simple.
- Be direct.
- Use ‘you’.
By order,
The Management
|
Get in touch now!
For a FREE, no-obligation chat, call me now on (01223) 241749.
|