Have you ever been in a foreign country and tried to buy something from a clerk who didn’t speak your language? It wasn’t easy, was it? Particularly if it was a more complex sell; something more than pointing to a piece of Apfelstrüdel (Apple Strudel)in a Patisserie (bakery) with one hand while holding out a handful of Euros in your other. Frustrating, wasn’t it.
Why? Because without the seller possessing a knowledge of your language, or you theirs, you can’t easily transact. Yet this is what we do all of the time when we communicate with our customers whether via our web site, our email communications or our printed product descriptions.
We try to establish our expertise by using all of those highly specialized words that only professionals in our industry know how to bandy about when all the customer really wants is for you to speak in his or her language about how your product can fill their need — in language they understand.
The Internet adds another level of confusion to this equation for miscommunication. You see not only do you run the risk of confusing people when they visit your site but we run the risk that they won’t even be able to find your site because they use their language to try to find you, not yours. The problem can be made even worse when, in the interest of creating competitive separation, you come up with our own terms.
I have a client who’s done this and he’s coined a great term to describe his customer’s target audience. That’s right, not his audience but his customer’s audience. The problem, of course, is that while it’s a clever term and, when they hear it, his customers get it, the fact is not one of his customers or prospects would ever think to use that term to find him. Why? Well they only learn the term once they’ve already found him. So any effort or outlay he’s invested to publicize this term won’t pay any dividends – at least in attracting the people who need his services.
What do you do? Learn your customer’s language and translate your industry-speak into customer-speak. Believe me they’ll be way more impressed with what you know then by any wad of $10 dollar (Euro) words you shake under their nose.
Oh and if you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’re a technical guy selling to a technical audience and, gee, you both speak the same language. Consider, who’s writing the check. Is it technical guy or is it executive guy who needs to understand what a frapperjappit does and why it costs so much? You might help your and tech guy’s cause a whole lot by providing the technical jargon that he relates too and a translation that will help him to convince exec guy that yours is the right solution.
Thanks for reading…
tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com
