Boring?

Are you guilty of boring your clients with communication that simply doesn’t cut it? It’s a common problem but there are a few things to look for which might tell you if you’re guilty.

There are many reasons people in business can be guilty of joining the throngs of the world’s worst communicators.  It’s not always a problem with not communicating at all (which is pretty widespread) but also one of communicating poorly when you do so.  The trick is to make sure you engage your intended audience in the ways that work for them – not you. You need to deliver your message in a way that responds to the recipients’ preferences if it’s to be absorbed at all. There’s little point in creating a regular communication vehicle designed to support your business development ambitions if at the other end, no one much wants to read it.

Be relevant

First, make sure you’re communicating something that’s relevant to their interests. If you don’t know what their interests are, you ought to ask them. A simple online survey is one way of doing this (but you might be disappointed with low response rates). Alternatively, a trusted network of clients might offer you some honest advice about the sorts of things they’re most interested in. However you do it, you need to ensure you always ask the question “what’s in it for them.”

Avoid jargon

The bane of much professional communication is jargon. You and your professional colleagues might be familiar with the secret code phrases and acronyms of your profession, but your target audience may not. Keep your jargon for your professional society meetings but when talking to clients and potential clients, use a common language. In this country, English is pretty handy.

Speak like a person

Have you ever read an opening line which sounds like it was written by a committee, a bureaucrat or a lawyer? It might start like ‘XYZ Services is pleased to announce that…’  but readers may not get much further than the opening sentence before the boredom factor kicks in. Would you ever pick up the phone and talk to someone is such a tortured, formal language? If you’re a lawyer, you might but for the rest of the world it’s not the way we communicate. So why is it that when we work on something written, we instinctively adopt an overly formal or clinical turn of phrase? If you actually want to communicate with your audience, my recommendation is that you read it aloud to someone first and see how long they stay interested.  When their eyes start to dart around the room, or start to close, you know you’ve got a problem.

Be visual

Humans are highly visual beings but too little is made of visual devices in business communication. I’ve seen so many newsletters, corporate brochures or e-zines which are packed with lengthy narratives which few people will ever read. But they will look at pictures, they will think about charts and graphs, or flow diagrams, or highlight boxes.  And when using visuals, don’t shrink them down in order to fit your text onto a page. Start with big visuals and captions. Any space left over is where you can put your narrative.

Keep it short

We’re all time poor. Keep your messages brief, and once you think you’ve done that, make them briefer still. Long narratives might look impressive or give you some sense of comfort, but bullet points and short paragraphs are better. If they want to know more, they can contact you (isn’t that the point anyway?)

Fear of being different

The herd instinct in corporate communication and business development is alive and well. Too often, the basis of your communication which talks about how your business is ‘unique’ or specialised and why you are unlike your competitors, makes you look and sound as if you are exactly the same as your competitors.  Don’t believe me? Try this: copy a selection of competitor business marketing collateral and remove all reference to individuals or company names or logos. Could you simply insert your company name into a rival’s material and no one would really know the difference? All too often, that’s exactly what happens. The herd instinct might provide you with a sense of safety (“but this is how everyone does it”) but it won’t do anything to set you apart.

Ask a third party

Yes this is a plug but you are likely to be the worst judge of your own material. To you, it’s familiar and to you, every word has been preciously crafted to represent your business in the best possible light. But you are unlikely to have the sort of perspective that a third party can bring. If you’re at risk of boring your clients to death, you might need someone else to point it out to you. In the nicest possible way, of course.