Speak your customers’ language
It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. How many times have you ever used the phrase “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that”? I’ll guess your answer is similar to mine – countless.
When communicating with your contacts, the last thing you want to do it get your message confused. Having the hindsight to use clear and effective vocabulary can boost your contact engagement through the roof.
Be on the same wavelength as your contact
Being able to communicate effectively with your contact means that you need to understand them. People buy from people, so if you can present yourself as their kind of person you can start to build an excellent relationship. Taking the time to dive a little deeper with your client at the initial stages allows you to find out more about them, and learn how they respond to different styles of communication. For example:
Name: Mr Peter Pan
Age: 110 (much older than he looks)
Location: Neverland
Characteristics: Enthusiastic, can’t sit still, loves the colour green, not a fan of pirates and spends most of his time away from his desk in meetings with the Lost Boys.
Assumptions of how to approach P Pan:
- Be less formal, he responds better to relaxed communications
- Email marketing is useless and he is never on his computer long enough to complete a call to action.
- Communication is best face-2-face or over online conference
Although I don’t suggest you assume too much about your contact, you can make educated guesses about ways to communicate. This is all information you can gain just from speaking with your contact a handful of times – taking you a step closer to gaining a new customer.
Attention-grabbing words
You can Google this and it will come up with lists of hundreds of different words, but the list below is of attention-grabbing words that I feel are seriously underused in business vocabulary:
- Discover
- Prove
- At Last
- Announcing
- Introducing
- Best Selling
- Official
- Authentic
- Proven
Contrary to my school English teacher – grammar isn’t everything
Reverting to my previous point of presenting yourself as your clients ideal type of person – being relatable and appealing to your clients’ personality can make your communications easier to digest. Just because you are not standing in front of your client when sending email marketing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t communicate as if you were.
Formalities can be great when discussing serious matters, or if your industry deals with sensitive topics such as the financial industry. However, with other industries, strict formality can sometimes make the contact feel uncomfortable. I’m not saying that you are to throw the English language to the wind – but loosen up a bit. Mastering the element of writing like you talk will help to convey you as a person, not a company. Use words you would really use, for example:
Would you use “Wouldn’t” or “Would Not” in standard conversation – I know which one I wouldn’t use.
Being relaxed in your written communication will radiate through to your contact. Making it that much easier to build a strong, and real relationship. Most importantly, if you ever try a new style of writing always monitor the results to see which is most effective.
Review the above and see how you can improve your written communications. Here are some key points to remember:
- Your contact wants to buy from a person, prove you are the person for them by mirroring your client’s personality through your writing.
- Be professionally relaxed, you may need to tone down the formalities
- Try using some attention-grabbing words in your communications to build contact engagement
