Speak it out clearly – and in a language we understand

How would this make you feel? You send someone something about a service you offer or a role you’re interested in and, in your first paragraph, you lose them?  They take one look at the first piece you’ve written and they’re already looking for someone else.  Yikes!

This happens and it happens a lot.  I’m also prepared to bet it’s what you do too, at times. You look at the opening paragraph or lines of a proposal, a CV, a covering letter, an invitation and you just think ‘no thanks’.  More often than not it’ll be a combination of one or all of the following 3 key elements:

1. the energy the person is coming across with – lots of self-important ‘I, me, my’ and very little collaborative ‘we, you, your’ and tons of ‘jargon’
2. the length of the message with no clear point or instruction out the front
3. the layout or style (or lack of) of the message – lot of CAPITALS shouting at you, too much use of boldening, sentences too long and – yikes – lots of typos or spelling mistakes.

These pieces all count as they build an impression of you, your style, what’s important to you and, what being around you or working with you would be like.

Here is a real-world, hot-off-the-press example from a VIP client – one of the smart men I work with, a senior executive in a City-based Lloyd’s Underwriter – and who makes the buying decisions for his company.

The company needs a new telephone system.  As my client said “all I need is an up-to-date telephone system to make and receive calls to and from the outside world.  That’s it.”

A proposal came in from a large organisation recommended to my client and, with a project value of around $25,000 / £16,000 – it was one which a number of smaller companies are eager to quote on too.

You’ll know exactly what I mean when I say my client is already looking for someone else to quote for his business.

The proposal was called “Hosted Voice Proposal” and the first, opening and inviting paragraph read:

“The fact that ‘Nameless plc’ offers a national E-Lan any-to-any service-based on VPLS is a potential point of differentiation that should be worked to the full.  ‘Nameless plc’ has a highly innovative proposal and in terms of a pure layer 2 ethernet message over NGN, transparent pricing and customer service, the carrier is tough to beat.”

Apart from making us both laugh out aloud, this is a perfect example to learn from about the dangers of jargon and over-blown, disengaging language.

Here are my 5 ‘avoid-these-at-all-costs’ tips:

1. The title is techy and confusing.  Know who you’re writing to, calling and try to understand their role.  It’s more important than yours and your knowledge in this moment.  If they’re not the technical guru then why would they understand technical jargon you might be tempted to use?
2. Abbreviations should either be set out in full or explained.  VPLS could mean ‘visible panty line situation’ – in a woman’s world it certainly can.  In this instance it meant ‘Virtual Private LAN System’ ie 2 abbreviations in the same sentence.  LAN means ‘local area network’. Who knew? I didn’t, nor did my client.
3. There’s no personality.  Who actually speaks like that?   Writing more like you speak is the quickest way to engage the reader.  More formal layout is needed at times but the more of your personality and energy you can weave in, the more engaging you’ll be.
4. Jargon and its perils.  We want to know what we’re going to get, what it’ll do for us, as in what the value is.  We don’t need to know how clever you are and how many letters there are after your name or all the industry-specific statistics.
5.  Long statements with no question.  Using over-blown language and then not even inviting the reader to think about something is such a waste of the moment.  Don’t you enjoy being invited to consider something?  When someone says “think about this for a second” and then relates it to your issue or interest, it’s more engaging, you’re involved. 

Albert Einstein famously said “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. KISS is an easy way to remember this.  Keep It Simple & Straightforward. I rest my case.