Small Office, Home Office Information |
| Small Business Messages 3 You might be talking but can your clients understand you? I’ve just been reading some press releases that are sent to me every day. These come in from a wide variety of businesses and they cover a huge variety of subjects. I give each a quick scan to see if there is something of interest for this blog and then move on to the next. My move to the next press release is often quicker if I can’t understand what the release is about. I’m constantly running into geek-speak, techno babble, jargon and other impediments to clear communication. And I figure that if I don’t understand them does anyone else really understand them either? And what about you? When you or your small business speaks to your clients can they understand you? Do you use language that they are comfortable with or do you blow it entirely by using words, phrases and jargon that they have no hope of understanding? For example when people ask Toni and I what we do we could look them in they eye and earnestly say: ‘Copy Text On Line provides text solutions for small to medium e-commerce merchants around the world.’ But will everyone we speak to understand the term ‘written solutions’ or ‘e-commerce merchants’? Undoubtedly there will be some who do understand those terms but the majority of people we talk to don’t … even if they are e-commerce merchants. Those people who don’t understand will probably smile and nod and dismiss us as being far too important to provide anything for their small business And sometimes we would dearly like to say something like that because it does lend an air of mystery and importance to a small business that employs a few scribblers to produce stories, articles, press releases and sales text for Webmasters who want to make money from their websites. Of course, I rarely use the word ‘scribbler’ either – it’s just something I tend to call myself in private so that I don’t get a swelled head. So what do we tell people who ask us what we do? We tell them that we write for small businesses located anywhere in the world that needs any form of written work. People understand that and buy what we have to offer. So how well
do you communicate with your clients?
21 Sep 2005 |
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