Your brand is much more than a logo or tagline. It’s everything your company stands for. It’s the quality of your products and services, the attitude of your employees, the altruism in the community and so much more. When your customers and the public at large see your logo or hear the name of your company, they get an image in their minds based on their personal experiences with your company. Good or bad, that image is your REAL brand, regardless of what your logo or tagline says.
Readers can relate better to a personal story than to a statistic. Stories show. Statistics tell. It’s always better to show than to tell when trying to communicate a point. Showing helps readers imagine themselves in the story – especially if the point you’re trying to make is a positive one, like buying your product. So consider using case studies and testimonials instead of statistics.
That’s not to say you should never use statistics. Just use them responsibly. Here are a few guidelines for when you do feel statistics are necessary:
Active sentences specify who does what. Passive sentences only say that something must be done. Passive tends to sound apologetic and wishy washy. Worse, it can leave the reader wondering if he’s the one who must perform the action. For employee communications, this confusion can wreak havoc on performance. In customer letters, the uncertainty can stifle the reading process, or flood your customer service center with unwanted phone calls.
Here’s how you can make your communications easy to understand.
If the purpose of your writing is, “to impress readers with my amazing vocabulary skills,” then by all means, break out the fancy prose and five syllable words. But, if you want your readers to act on your message, buy your product, or simply to “get it,” then check your thesaurus at the door.
Write conversationally as if you’re talking to your mother over coffee. For example:
Here are some techniques that can put you face-to-face, sipping coffee over a cozy table with your reader, instead of you being high up in a cold corporate tower looking down at your nameless subjects.
Start by reviewing your marketing materials, form letters and other communications (both internal and external) to see if you refer to your company in the third person. For example, “XYZ Company thanks you for your business.” “XYZ Company is pleased to introduce a new product…”
In last month’s articles, Win Over More Readers with Better Headlines, we talked about grabbing your readers’ attention in about one second. Now let’s keep their attention with scanable subheads.
Subheads are just as important as your main headline
Even though they make up a small percent of your overall communication, headlines and subheads are the most important real estate on the page. That’s because 8 out of 10 people merely scan the largest print. If the few pieces of big copy don’t draw them in, there’s no chance they’ll read the little copy.
Remember, we’re smack in the middle of the age of over-information. You get about one second to grab a reader’s attention and draw him in before he tosses the communication aside. Get the headlines right and you’ve won 80% of the game.
In today’s age of information-overload, reader preferences have shifted to quick and helpful, rather than bureaucratic and stiff. Do your business communications measure up? Here’s a checklist you can use to spot-check the effectiveness of your company’s internal and external materials. “Effective” means readers can follow the content with speed and ease, it’s meaningful to them, and they can act on the information presented without confusion.
Know your audience
• Did you prepare your communication with your audience in mind?
You can lead a horse to water… but sometimes you have to make it easier to drink.
We’re smack in the middle of the Information Age. Everywhere you turn, you see words ― in books, magazines, television, junk mail, not-so-junk mail, computers, tablets, smart phones, billboards ― even the tag on your child’s bedtime bear. We’re so surrounded with words that we have conditioned ourselves to ignore most of it. It’s all white noise until something grabs our attention.
It’s no secret that healthy employees can mean a healthier benefits budget. Study after study shows that employers who create and sustain a culture of wellness in the workplace really can spend less on health benefits. They also see less absenteeism and fewer disability claims. And let’s not forget their employees are more productive on the job. If you’ve ever been to an HR convention, you already know this. If not, go ahead and Google it. We’ll wait.
Many businesses spend a lot of time and money trying to get new clients. It seems to be an ongoing process. So much time is spent generating leads, having conversations, submitting proposals, trying to close the sale. Unfortunately, I witness many businesses not spending as much time trying to get their existing clients to return. Once you have a customer why not spend some resources to get them to spend more with you?
You have generated the leads and set up appointments with qualified prospects. You have read all the sales training books and are ready to close some sales. You go on your appointments and follow the process you’ve learned. You build rapport, you ask the questions, you expose their pain, you offer the solution, you deal with the objections and you ask for the order. After all of that you still get “I want to think about it.” Or “I’m not sure this will work.” Or “I have to review this with my (boss, spouse, colleague etc). In the end you have difficulty sealing the deal.
Most business people hate cold calling. Why is that? Primarily it is fear. Fear of rejection. Or maybe fear that you will be perceived as being aggressive or pushy on the phone. Or just that you are uncomfortable interrupting someone during their busy day. Whatever the issue is, I highly encourage you to get past these uncomfortable feelings.
In a recent workshop I facilitated I openly asked the business people in the room what they thought of salespeople. Now, mind you, most of the people in the room were business owners or employees all of which had a major role of growing their respective businesses. Here are some of the things I heard. “They lie.” “They’ll do anything to get the sale.” “All they care about is their own commission.” “They are irritating.” “I feel like I need to take a shower with antibiotic body wash after I deal with one” (actually, I made the last one up myself).
I’m sure you have heard these statistics before. Fifty percent of all businesses fail within two years, 80 percent fail within five years, and most businesses never come close to the original projections for revenue and profit.
Managing your business during hard times is difficult. But managing people, the culture, the emotions, the behavior, can be doubly difficult when the business isn’t doing that well. Especially if you had to let some of the staff go. How do you keep the team upbeat and motivated when all there seems to be is bad news? How do you get the best out of your people during such times? There is so much uncertainty that employees seem to be constantly looking over their shoulder. Here are some ideas that may help you.
How many of us have vowed to get back in shape? We want to start working out on a regular basis and lose that extra few pounds. So we join a gym or start an in home exercise program. We are gangbusters for the first couple of weeks but there is that one morning when we wake up and say, “maybe I’ll skip today, I just don’t feel like I have it this morning.” Then you try to get back into your exercise routine but you start exercising only three days a week instead of four. Then it goes to two days a week and then you get to the point you haven’t exercised in over a month.
As many of the people I have met know I am an avid golfer. Playing golf in this part of the country is primarily a summer sport unless you’re willing to layer up and confront the cold, which I am not. So what do I do in the winter months? This is where many people that I know are not aware of another passion I have. That is playing pool. I have played pool since my teenage years (some would say an ill spent youth) and take it very seriously. I have played every game imaginable on a pool table and constantly seek to increase my skills at the sport.
Who hasn’t made a mistake? We all have at some point. We would all like to think that we are perfect but we all know that is impossible. Yet we all try our hardest not to make mistakes. Some of us even get very anxious about it to the point it paralyzes us from doing things. We get fearful of making a mistake. It might make us look bad and maybe even embarrass us. These thoughts, of course, come from deep beliefs that were probably ingrained in us since we were young children.
As a business owner are you exhausted at the end of the work day? Are you tired of doing everything yourself? Are your team members unwilling to make decisions and are coming to you for even the smallest of issues? The truth is that most business owners, who are skilled at just about every task in their company, struggle with the one thing that can make a big difference . .
