For the Customer's Sake, Keep it Simple

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" Fortunately, the Intel spokesperson I heard didn't speak like this. Instead, he focused on the benefits to the listener and not the features. He said, "This new technology significantly reduces the time it takes for your computer to power up!"

As soon as you begin talking, your listeners have one question on their minds: Why should I care? Give your listeners a reason to care about your message by focusing on how your product or service will improve their lives. Make the answer consistent throughout all of your communications. The other day I worked with a representative from a commodity board in California. This individual had to give a big presentation in Japan to bring produce retailers in that country up to date on farm regulations in the U.S.

It could have turned into a boring data dump of facts and figures. But before we even began to review his presentation, I asked the speaker, "Let's say I'm in the audience during your talk. What do you want me to know? What is the one thing that I will learn from your presentation? The speaker answered, "I'm here to give you the confidence that our fruit is the safest in the world and you should feel comfortable selling it to your consumers and feeding it to your family." In one sentence, he succeeded in grabbing the attention of his listener, reinforcing the theme of his talk, and selling the "benefits" of doing business with him.

On Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, researchers at Stanford University released some of King's early, previously unpublished, letters and sermons. In one, King wrote, "Educated ministers leave the people lost in the fog of theological abstractions, rather than pressing the theology in the light of people's experiences. I must forever make the complex, the simple." Take every opportunity to reduce the complexity from your communications. Your listeners crave simplicity!

New Book Announcement

I'm pleased to announce that I'm working on a new book to be published later this year. Please send me an e-mail if you would like to be kept up to date or if you have any suggestions of individuals who should be featured in the book—men and women who inspire through their communications. Send me an e-mail directly at carmine@gallocommunications.com

Carmine Gallo is a Pleasanton, Calif. communications coach and author of the upcoming book, Fire Them Up! (John Wiley & Sons; October, 2007).