I was with a client the other day and we were talking about some strategies for improving customer acquisition and sales in his business. Reviewing what he and his immediate competitors were doing and thinking about what potential clients were looking for uncovered an issue that, I think, many businesses can suffer from. That is most businesses can settle, through laziness, habit or other reasons into using their own language when trying to explain and generate demand or understanding for their products and services. Nowhere is this more so than in industries that are somewhat technical in nature e.g. web-design, architecture, accountancy, tax, engineering etc.

Through experience and research, I have found that, generally:

• Your customers do not understand what you do
• Customers base their opinions of quality on many things – your product or service being just a small part
• The non-core areas of your business are very, very important to how your customer perceives you
• Customers will judge your expertise in areas they do not understand by your excellence in areas which they do

Therefore, using your customers language will go a long way to improving understanding, increasing engagement and trust and, eventually, improving your rate of customer acquisition and sales.

Are you operating in an industry that is technical (even a little bit)? Are you speaking in a language that your customer understands? Or, even better, are you talking the customers language?

Which industries have you come across that seem to be speaking a foreign language?

Thanks to viZZZual for the photo