It’s very simple.

It’s also very effective. Last year, we helped our customers to win $1.5bn in revenue.

Find out what makes us so good

1 – They’re scared of writing

2 – They don’t know what to say

3 – They say everything, meaning there’s no filter for the reader

Writing for clients is a half–day, intensive course that will improve your standard of writing and show you how to create compelling content for your audience. It’s for people who need to write brilliant documents and need to engage important people in just a few words.

Let me give you an example of how this can help. What follows is the introduction from a real executive summary. It is in the public domain because it was for a public contract, but I’ve changed names and nouns so you don’t think I’m cruel.

This is for a genuine contract of high value:

“Executive Summary

LittleTed Inc. is part of the BigTed family of companies. BigTed is a global professional services firm with annual revenues exceeding $19 billion.

The BigTed companies are active in the following sectors: IT and financial services, LittleTed Inc and Jemima; asset management, through Humpty.

LittleTed LLP is one of the LittleTed Inc companies. LittleTed Inc.’s more than 12,500 employees provide consulting services from 125 offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the world.”

It goes on.

We’ve got three paragraphs here — and nowhere do they acknowledge the client’s problem. This should be your starting point. Instead the writer tells you how big the company is. It’s like saying: “Look at my muscles.”

Well, that’s great, but how are you going to take away this customer’s headache? Oh, you don’t know?

Your clients need to see you understand their problem at least as well as they do — if not better. With the amount of information that people have to wade through, this executive summary probably failed to engage the reader.

Data is everywhere. When it’s organised it becomes information. But that’s not enough because information is a commodity. You need to be able to act on information. Then it becomes knowledge. And experience of how to use knowledge is wisdom. Show buyers that and they will speak to you.

Nowhere do these three paragraphs prove that knowledge or wisdom are a service that LittleTed, BigTed, Jemima or Humpty provide. You’re left asking the question, “So what?”

For a large bid worth millions, can you really afford to take that risk with your introductions?

There’s still room available in our next on-site course of “Writing for clients,” but spaces are going fast. Mark your calendar for 24 April, and sign up now.

Hope to see you there!

Dan

This little gem is from the Urban Dictionary, which gives the example: “Alex released his synergasm onto the crowd, ‘At the end of the day, we have to leverage our value add paradigm by aligning our solution with our customer centric core competencies’.”

Taken to an extreme, real-life synergasm can earn you public ridicule. Citigroup, for example, was recently mocked by The Atlantic for what senior editor Derek Thompson called, “the most remarkable incident of concentrated euphemistic corporate jargon I’ve ever seen.”

Citigroup had published a press statement that read: “Citigroup today announced a series of repositioning actions that will further reduce expenses and improve efficiency across the company while maintaining Citi’s unique capabilities to serve clients, especially in the emerging markets. These actions will result in increased business efficiency, streamlined operations and an optimized consumer footprint across geographies.”

Or, as Thompson noted: “Citigroup today announced lay offs. These actions will save money.”

What’s worse than a synergasm are multiple synergasms. And where do you usually find these? In executive summaries that CEOs read. And in press releases that journalists and investors read.

Remember the phrase: “If in doubt, leave it out.” It will help you a lot in your career.

—-

In other news, if you’d like to come to our corporate entrepreneurs evening, Superuser II, please email me and tell me the talents you can share to help other Superusers.

We’re doing a lot of product messaging over this quarter. Our bid programs continue to help our customers win business. And we are putting our Superuser coaching syllabus onto E-learning.

Have fun in your work.

Dan

Erbut Ltd.
+44 20 7183 0680
dan@erbut.com

It’s customary for editors to publish two types of article at this time of year:

1. In December, a look back at the last year
2. In January, a list of five or ten trends that will occur this year

This is for two reasons: First, it hopefully provides some insight. Second, it allows the editors to use content already created and slope off to the pub.

So my question of the day for you is: Have you sent your customers a list of 2013 trends you expect them to see? Tell them what they need to be thinking about. Give me a nudge if you’d like some help on that.

And for you guys, what trends do you need to be considering? Well, in true media style, here are some predictions of what I think you’ll need this year:

1. Social media and mobile working will continue to push their way into big deals. Those who show knowledge and wisdom of the relevance of these technologies and channels will stand themselves in a better position.

2. Relationships are recession-proof. Now, more than ever, you need to be tight with customers and the team around you. Buy a round of beers for them or go for some food. Bond. The fact you have widgets to solve customer problems is no longer enough. Your customers want people they can turn to.

3. Your own brand will come into its own. Don’t believe me? Just check out Mepedia.com – a professional network for Millennials. If you thought you were behind on your LinkedIn profile, you’re now even further behind the younger generation, who have built their own social network for careers. Why? They got sick of going up against people with tons of experience and great CVs. They couldn’t win that game, so they built a network that pushes their talents and personalities for the careers they want – not those put on them.

4. Superusers (corporate entrepreneurs) will rule the day. The Middle Management Mafia, stuck in their ways and determined to stop your progress, will continue to be your sworn enemy for some time yet, however. If you’re interested in becoming a Superuser, pop over to our LinkedIn Network.

5. The success of your pipeline will depend directly on the communication of:

• How well you communicate that you understand a customer’s problem
• How well you manage the effect of your communication (not just anecdotally)
• How well you play together as a team
• The strength of your leadership

So the lesson of the day: Get your pipeline in order. Measure the effects of what you’re doing. Be better at communicating. And start making decisions. Or you’ll end up being one of those Middle Management Mafia types who will move mountains to stop anything happening. See “Yes, Prime Minister” for details.

Have a good week. Now go win some business. And call me if you want some help with that.

Dan

So it’s understandable that companies preparing bids want to convey the importance of those documents as much as possible … Sometimes by Capitalizing every Word they consider Especially Important.

Take another look at the second half of that last sentence. Did capitalizing all those words really add anything of value to the sentence? Or did it just make it odd looking and harder to read?

Experts in typography – which Merriam-Webster defines as “the style, arrangement or appearance of typeset matter” – say overuse of capitalization slows readers down. One reason for this is that people tend to read word by word, rather than letter by letter, and recognize words by their shape. Capitalizing a word that is not normally capitalized changes that word’s shape and, thus, its readability.

Overcapitalization also looks antiquated, according to the Guardian’s style guide:

“A look through newspaper archives would show greater use of capitals the further back you went. The tendency towards lower case, which in part reflects a less formal, less deferential society, has been accelerated by the explosion of the internet: some web companies, and many email users, have dispensed with capitals altogether.”

And then there’s this reason not to overdo it:

“(O)veruse of capitals, particularly when addressing outside readers, can convey the image of a bureaucracy that is overawed by its own concepts and processes,” writes Robert B. Parkinson of WritingforResults.net.

While some style guides offer pages and pages of exceptions and special cases, English tends to have just two basic rules for capitalization:

1. Capitalize the first words of sentences
2. Capitalize proper nouns (ie, “Warren Buffett” or “FedEx”, but not “the company’s chairman” or “our overseas data center”)

Outside of those two instances, it’s best to set your “default” style to lower case. As the Economist’s style guide advises:

“If in doubt use lower case unless it looks absurd.”

• They answer the question they want to answer, not the question that’s being asked – Maybe the prospect wants specific details on how they would work with the prospect’s current cloud service provider … but the firm writing the bid currently partners with another cloud company. So they go ahead and ignore the original question and plug their own partner’s virtues instead.
• They ‘spin’ their credentials to make it look like they’ve done things they haven’t – In one part of the RFP, the prospect asks for case studies illustrating the bidding company’s experience with long-range planning for large cities with populations of over one million. The problem is: the company hasn’t worked with cities of that size. That’s OK … they can provide three glowing case studies about smaller towns they’ve worked with, leave out the names and hope no one asks for more details.
• They use big words to sound important – Sentences like, “We help banks offer online and mobile services to their customers,” don’t make a company sound nearly important, global and high-tech enough. They decide they’re much better off saying something like, “We facilitate the implementation of multi-channel interactive applications for financial institutions pursuing an internationalized client base.”
• They ignore important instructions – Why should it matter whether the executive summary is titled, “Executive_Summary_from_the_CEO.doc” (which the company’s CEO wants) or “Executive_Summary_from_Our_Company_Inc.doc” (which is how the prospect wants it, based on the RFP instructions)? The information’s the same either way, isn’t it? It’s obvious either way that this is the executive summary, right?
• They focus only on making their own company look good – So they need to be sure to emphasize their star quality throughout their response, rather than focus on the prospect’s problems and needs. The prospect needs to be wowed with marketing hype, not bored with details about how their company can help it relieve its pain points, solve its problems and meet its goals.

Simple, concrete language paints a much more vivid, compelling picture than jargon, management-speak or million-dollar words. So after you’ve completed your first draft of a document, read through it again and look for ways to simplify what you’re saying.

Consider this sentence:

“Our solutioning strategy is constructed upon our proprietary methodology and infrastructure.”

That’s a lot of big words for a message with very little meaning.

Each time you see a multisyllabic, corporatese-type word in something you’ve written, ask yourself what it’s supposed to mean. Then see if you can find a simpler, clearer way to express that meaning.

For example, in the sentence above, what is a “solutioning strategy”? Isn’t that just a needlessly complicated way to describe your company’s services? And isn’t “constructed” simply a long way to say “built on” or “based on”?

By distilling jargon-y words into their simplest meanings, you can transform dense, gobbledygook-filled sentences like the above example into something far more meaningful and easier to read, like:

“Our services are based on methods and technology we developed ourselves.”

Which version do you think your customers would rather read?

If we ask that question, it is normally met with blank looks.

Media companies and a few others might have style guides mastered (in theory). But what about sales professionals?

Style doesn’t apply only to tender documents. Much as you seek consistency in the way your team dresses or presents, style can mean consistency across emails, presentation decks, even social media.

And, of course, style also applies to those longer tender documents. These are often the fruit of many individuals’ labour, each one bringing something different to the table (sometimes even various versions of English).

Style will generally differ from one country to another. It also has to evolve alongside changing language usage and new terminology that’s specific to certain fields.

It’s important for any company to:

• Recognise style is important – inconsistency, for example, can have negative effects on client interactions
• Know where a universal – or, at the very least, country-wide – style guide can be found
• Adhere to this across all forms of communication
• Back up this best practice by having team members monitor and edit one another’s work

Style is more than just a cosmetic issue, especially in high-level business communications. Unfortunately, most organisations simply don’t establish or stick to a style. Creating an effective style guide and following it will take some time and effort … but get it right, and you have a competitive advantage.

What would your competitors say about you?

And how do you describe your company or offering?

These are just a few questions we have to ask when identifying a brand in a market. This is not always straightforward.

For example – take a team of ten people and ask them each the same questions. You’ll probably get different answers from each person. So which one is right?

The answer is all of them. Your brand is not something you can control once other people start to talk about it.

The problem therefore is alignment.

That word keeps cropping up everywhere for us. Alignment of messages. Alignment between sales and marketing operations. And alignment of people’s focus on the customer problem.

It is an important word and even more important to practice it.

To do it properly, you need to have a good framework for your messages. You need to know who you’re targeting, why you’re targeting them and what they need to hear.

You also have to build a framework that enables marketing and sales teams to work together – something that many teams struggle with.

If you need any help on any of these areas, give me a call. That’s what we do. One of our people can help.

And in other news – check out this video case study of how Erbut helped Utilyx CEO Chris Bowden land a multi-million pound deal.

Not winning deals? Failing to get the right messages out to the market? Give us a call.

Write Club – Erbut’s coaches run a number of business writing sessions. Call us to find out more.

Erbut Ltd.: +44 020 7183 0680, info@erbut.com

In an era of zettabytes of data and digital shadows, you should remember that someone is always listening, watching for what you will say next. So how you communicate what your business is doing is more important than ever.

The pros at the Bloomberg Speed Desk, for example, have turned corporate news-watching into a near-science. It’s their job to scour every news item that crosses their screens for the “real” news buried (often intentionally) far down in a press release or earnings statement. And when they identify and report on these hidden bombshells, the results – financial and reputational – for a business can be devastating.

Being caught in such “gotchas” is something to avoid, even if it means acknowledging an unpleasant fact, or making a revelation you’d rather not make. That’s why it’s critical to fine-tune your business communications. Every word matters, and once you utter it or put it in print, you can’t take it back. More than ever before, the whole world is watching … and listening.