Imagine this: your best salesperson, Serina, goes to a networking event. She has her escalator pitch ready, she knows her product and she’s at the top of her game. Her business cards are holstered like she’s ready for networking pistols at dawn and she’s had a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast. She rocks up, feeling great. She walks through the door, head held high and a smile on her face. What does her audience see? A creased shirt, a tiny bit of loo paper flapping around at the back of her trousers and a little dribble of ketchup down her lapel from that oh-so-hearty breakfast. Despite her knowledge, confidence and experience, is she likely to hold much credibility?
The fact is, if she’s really that good, she might be able to neutralise those first impressions, but she’ll have to work harder and overcome objections created by her own sloppy attention to detail.
Is it fair to judge on the superficial?
Some might say that to judge a person on appearances alone is shallow, but we do it; it’s in our nature. The person that turns up for a meeting represents their business, and the sub-conscious leap that we make raises a question: if Serena pays that little heed to her own presentation, what kind of care will she give to our lovingly nurtured and very important project? Even worse, does her employer even care whether their personnel maintain a basic standard in other areas of their work?
I’m hoping that by this point that you’ve realised Serena is a metaphor for poor writing letting down a great business.
Is it really only superficial?
No doubt you’ve seen the Let’s eat Grandma! vs Let’s eat, Grandma! example of a misplaced comma – it exists because it’s a good demonstration of how a simple punctuation mark can change the meaning of a sentence. Commas have made the difference between winning and losing tribunals. Imagine a warning sign on a piece of manufacturing equipment:
Do not move the lever on the right, it’s dangerous.
vs
Do not move the lever. On the right, it’s dangerous.
Yes, it would probably be better to reword the instruction entirely for clarity, but you take my point.
Provided the message is on point, do the words matter?
That new webpage or blog post that you published last month; the introductory email or printed pamphlet; the Facebook post designed to engage your customers; all these promotional tools represent your brand and the quality of the workmanship that you deliver.
If you know your product is shoddy then, fair enough, use a slapdash writing style because it won’t set people’s expectations too high. If, however, you take pride in the fact that your business provides a quality product or service, that quality should shine through at every touch point, every contact that your customer has in any format throughout their dealings with you. Your words matter.
Your words are your sales force
Your written marketing content behaves nowadays like our telemarketing teams and sales reps used to. By the time someone picks up a phone or writes you an email, they are already over 60% of their way through the sales process. They’ve done their research, they know what they want to buy, they’ve looked at their options and now they are ready to talk. They’ve selected you. Congratulations! You’re already a significant way through the process of closing a deal.
Set your own standards
I get it. Some of you don’t care about punctuation and couldn’t give a monkey’s if someone sends you a message in text speak and emojis only. But don’t write with the belief that your audience feels the same; assume that they expect the same quality from your communication as they do from every other aspect of your business. Provided you follow that one rule then, right there, you have your benchmark.
Image credits: Flarian Klauer (typewriter), Daniel Minarik (black and grey metal frame).