contributed by Dana Detrick

It doesn’t matter if you got your business education within the hallowed halls of a prestigious university, from trusted mentors, coaches, or colleagues, or on the street. Odds are good we’ve all been speaking the same “borin’ language” for awhile. Whether it’s just so vague no one can even understand what you do, or so flat out boring that no one cares, it’s time once and for all for it to GO.

Here are some examples from the Lexicon of Lame to make sure we’re on the same page:

Your branding must communicate to the end user and quantifiable leads how your innovative strategic benefits will convert them into the funnel. Then they will make more money! Live more life! Have more success! See more profits! Eat more pizza!

Ok, so maybe that particular paragraph hasn’t been sent to you in an email…but probably not something far from it.

A-ha Moments

Sometimes even old standards can benefit from a wording change.

My “a-ha” moment (which did in fact take on me…take me on, in a sense) came when I was plotting my new elevator pitch with some of the friends I made in a coaching program I joined a few years ago. The program is dead in the water, but thankfully the friendships aren’t (learn from me before you shell out cash – the relationships will be the most important things, anyway, no matter what you join). We’d all heard the same drill about how to form your USP and your elevator pitch (two things you actually use very little, but were the subject of an insane amount of focus). So when it was time to reboot my biz, I started right in with the forced, “You know how you blah blah blah? Well what I do is blah blah BLAH!”. Instead of “wounding ” in order to “heal” them, I was poking at an old scab.

Here’s an example (and this was honestly going to be it):

I help production companies and creative individuals make more money and achieve more success!
How? By providing them high impact (alt: high quality) audio, visual, and marketing solutions, that expand their services and grow their business.

Or to quote one of my brethren below (who shall remain nameless, only so I can call in favors later):

“More money, more freedom, more life, more vomit!”.

Thank GAWD my buds had my back! They weren’t going to let me stew in my own puddle of mediocre marketing-speak. Between Patrick Walsh of Map Business Growth Strategies, Marina Flournoy of Heartful Village, Derek Heck of Scapes Creative and Bootstrapping Blog, and Anila Muhammad of Market Penguin, I was properly redirected.

When I was trying to explain what I meant above (first sign you’re on the wrong track: you have to explain your explanation), I hit something that resonated with all of them: “…I find I’m turning smaller studios into bigger ones by being a collaborator…”

That’s it. That’s the hot button. I mean, what could be better, more benefit driven, or more descriptive than making something they have that is small increase in size, with little or no effort on their part? And this was something that not only I understood and could communicate, but that my clients were already telling me.

But this isn’t about me and my particular language barrier. It’s about turning off the “borin’ language” once and for all!

Here are three tips to help you drop the business buzzwords and get down to what you really want to say:

1. Speak YOUR mind. It’s important that your language be natural to how you’re already communicating, especially if that’s what is already drawing in your customers or clients. Making sure THEY understand could be as easy as looking at what you are already saying on the phone or in emails, or just asking them!

Exercise:
If you’re not a natural writer and hate blogging or copywriting, but LOVE talking, a great exercise is to get a mic for your laptop, a tape recorder, or a voice recording app that will allow you to just hit record, and chat. Act like you’re talking to them, or just…talk. Talk about why you love your business. Talk about what your last project was like. Then notate it. You’ll find your language in it, and it will flow much more naturally than trying to imitate what a marketer or copywriter is doing.

2. Check for Understanding. In one of the e-Learning programs I have regularly voiced over the years for teens and ESL students, there’s always a “Check for Understanding” quiz at the end of each section of the program. It’s hard to remember when you’ve been out of school for awhile that it’s best to test yourself and your work before adding more data to it, or moving on to something bigger, but doing those programs always reminded me of it.

Exercise:
The exercise you can do here is to take your copy out to the masses and get some feedback. As we get lost in our own language sometimes, getting feedback from others will bring us back to whether or not we’re actually communicating effectively. Do people in your industry understand it? If so, good. Do buyers or clients understand it? Good. Do your friends or family or general public who have no idea what you do or have no use for what you sell understand it? Hint: there’s no right or wrong on this one. Sometimes, if you disqualify everyone from getting it, you can hone in on the ones who really need to. Other times, if you’re not hitting every granny or grade schooler with your message, you’re losing. Trust yourself to judge this!

3. Do your work anyway! There are a lot of teachers and programs out there that will have you hyper focused on your marketing language, killing precious time you should be working with clients. But how can you work with clients if you can’t market to them, you ask? I am turning the tables back on you and asking: how can you possibly know who your client is that you need to speak to until you’ve actually worked with them? Most of us will spend our entire careers crafting and altering our messages, or paying someone else to do it for us. We will be both right and wrong at any given time, because our industries will constantly be changing. That is marketing. It’s an ever-evolving beast you will both love and hate as it both anchors and propels you forward.

Exercise:
You get out there and work anyway. Sometimes you learn that you are appealing to the wrong client – but you must keep working. Then you change, and the next one is more on target. The only exercise for moving forward is to keep moving forward.

I hate to quote old clichés, but it’s true, most people do judge you not by words, but by actions. All of the marketing language in the world would not have raised the Titanic, or turned Milli Vanilli into Il Divo.

That coaching program my friends and I belonged to had an awesome USP that they used for many years. Their elevator pitch was so crisp and concise, and I’d heard it so many times, I could probably still recite it if forced to in a parlor game. But that company is now bankrupt.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do to tell your clients who you are and what you can do for them, is to just shut up and do the work.