All the skills you need to successfully promote your business you learned in high school.
Lost for words
Honestly, you’ll have been taught them. But then, I’m quite a nerd. And, having chased up my own post-secondary education with a career that has largely centred in and around both writing and teaching the nuances of the English language, it’s fair to say I’ve honed those skills some. Which works well for me as a paid pen for hire. But I truly believe that everybody has that tool of savvy rhetoric in their satchel – no matter how sharp the blade.
Do you want to know the secret? Well, there isn’t one. The truth is, there is no great secret to selling ideas, concepts and services with words. It’s not a mystical dark art, unachievable to the mere mortal. It’s a formulaic walk in the park.
My business is based around helping the businesses of others, through the power of words. No matter what your line of work, words matter. Perhaps more than you might imagine.
Driving home recently, the musical interlude on the radio was broken up by a stream of advertising. A silky voice informed me how Autumn was the ‘most beautiful season of all. Fiery reds, burnt orange leaves, and pavements a blanket of colour’.
A smooth description, not an unsuccessful line for an advertisement you might say. Well, it was all wrong to me.
They lost me at the word ‘blanket’. It stuck out like a sore thumb, an ink blot that covered that flourishing autumnal scene their words were painting in confusion. It’s a simple thing really, but the imagery was all wrong. The caramel bunny voice had me at fiery reds, and the burnt orange leaves were all but dancing before my eyes. But pavements a blanket of colour?
Wrong season!
When I picture pavements blanketed, my mind automatically pictures snow. It’s a classic metaphor for a winter scene.
So busy was I musing over how the appropriate word to describe a collection of multi-tonal autumnal leaves would be ‘patchwork’, I missed the rest of the advert.
Patchwork would have been the perfect adjective. Not only does it more accurately convey the contrast of different colours and shapes of the leaves, but it also provides that pleasing puff of alliteration in your ear – ‘the pavements a patchwork of colour’.
Short story – I have no idea what I was being sold.
It might seem ridiculous to say that one poorly chosen word can cost you business, but in that instant, it did.
If that’s true for me, it’s true for others. The advert wasn’t a disaster – it was working, until the moment it wasn’t working.
Make every word count. Because if your words aren’t working for you, I can guarantee, they’re working against you.
In my new series of blogs I’m offering a refresher course on those tried and tested persuasive language devices that we were taught in school. Simple, practical skills that you can take away and try out in your own writing.
After all, every day’s a school day, and you’re never too old to learn new tricks. Who knows – the right combination of words might win you that all important client or customer.
