We all have our own way of connecting with our business clients, our leadership team, and personal relationships. From a business perspective everything we say, communicates to our potential clients. The content we use for marketing and the language on our websites tells the client a lot about who we are and how we work. Often, business owners may overlook the importance of have the right language on all of their marketing. One error that happens is when companies have marketing messages that conflict. This can lead to confusion and reduced sales. Another error is when a company doesn’t use language that is typical for their clients.
This problem happens when marketing uses industry specific language full of technical terms. Clients find this type of industry slang confusing. This type of “business-ese” leaves the clients wondering what you are talking about. Then some feel too embarrassed to ask you to dummy it down, so they can understand you. This disconnect leads to distance in the client relationship. Should this confusion continue, it could cost a sale. So how do you bridge this gap?
Business Marketing Rule – You Must Speak the Clients Language
To be worthy of hearing what you are saying you must speak the client’s language. Not a spoken language, rather the emotional language the client uses to describe what they want.
When a client comes to your business they will come with a request, a need, or want; this is their emotional language. How they describe that to you will tell you about their language and the emotional importance it has to them. If you sell widgets and a client comes to you saying, “the last company I bought my widgets from ripped-me-off by selling me this cheap crap,” then you know that they feel taken advantage of”. Quality is important to this client. So use your sales leadership to show them the quality widgets you have. It’s easy to get their attention. Just speak their emotional language!
Marketing Messages Need to be Consistent
Once you have a good idea what you want to communicate write it in language that will connect with your potential client. Then it’s time to review all of your marketing messages. This includes what the potential clients see in any advertising, your website, and what you say when they give you a call. Since all marketing and sales processes have several steps, it’s wise to make sure the messages from each step are consistent with each other.
In our experience with sales conversion, we can say it’s easy to see where there is a disconnect between steps. You can tell because you’ll notice that you’ll be losing a high number of potential clients. This happens when the message is off from one step to another. So watch for a large drop in conversion from step to step. For example, if your website is sending you leads on a higher priced service that you follow up with, you may expect that only 25% of those will become clients. That’s normal. If you are getting less than that, you’ll more than likely be experiencing a very small conversion such as only 5%. Why? Because, sales and marketing conversion is like an ON-OFF switch, it either works well or not at all.
Adapt Your Communication Style and Win New Business Clients
Don’t ever sell out to a process or script just because it works. It may work in most cases but will fail to connect well to most clients. Adapt it to your style of relationship building and ask open-ended questions to get the information you need. Remember to listen to the emotion behind the words, so you can speak to the feelings that the client is having. Fulfilling the client’s requests will be effortless and easy when you get their emotional language, and they will happily send and promote your business to their friends and family.