Recently, I was at a conference where the speakers were definitely experts and leaders in their fields. However, I noticed that while some of them were fine teachers—some of the others who knew so much about their topics had a really hard time teaching and making things understandable for the attendees. I realized that this often affects us in our businesses—the more we know, the more of an expert we are, the harder it can be to share our information with people who don’t know anything about it at all.
I think when we really know a subject well—when we’ve been working in it for years or have become so familiar with how our business operates or our products and services, it can be hard to take ourselves back to the mind of a novice. Many of our prospects and customers are novices, however, and may know absolutely nothing about what we are trying to do for them. We might fill our pitches with all sorts of jargon and assumptions that make it impossible for a “newbie” to understand. What a turnoff this is! I’m sure that you, like me, have been in that situation where you had no idea what someone was trying to say to you and you ended up feeling like an idiot. I think it is safe to say that most of us do NOT want to make our customers and prospects feel like idiots!
Try to remember what it was like in the beginning and get your pitch back down to basics. Believe it or not, it may help you to pick up a primer of one of those “books for Dummies” on your industry—this can help remind you of what a beginner might want or need to know. You can then make sure that your marketing materials, information, and the way you talk with prospects and customers is geared toward where they actually are—and you can refrain from talking to them as if they were as big of an expert as you are!
Also: Do You Talk Too Much?
Taking Criticism With a Grain of Salt
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