Written by Jolie Newman, P
resident of ProEdit Solutions
Last summer I read a fascinating Wall Street Journal article entitled “Lost in Translation”. While the main thrust of the article was the extent to which language influences culture, the author used the nursery rhyme, “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…” as a stage-setter to demonstrate how much languages differ from one another.
The author said, “In English, we have to mark the verb for tense…we say ‘sat’ rather than ‘sit.’ In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense. In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Humpty did the sitting…In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you’d use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you’d use a different form.”
What does this have to do with the outsourcing and offshoring industry? It’s a silly yet sage reminder that whether on their website, in sales presentations, collateral, bylined articles or RFP responses – even in e-mails and LinkedIn postings – service providers must use language and a communications style that matches that of their prospects to most effectively sell their solutions.
Against this backdrop, here are my recommended top ten communications “Dos” for service providers (alphabetised, rather than ranked in order of importance…they are all critical!):
- Address your prospects’ pain points
Make it abundantly clear you understand their challenges, and position what you say to show specifically how you confront those issues. For example, if you’re selling IT system management capabilities to the insurance industry, write in the context of the many issues they face with their myriad legacy systems. If your solution is for web analytics teams, explain that you can eliminate their time wasted on the routine data-crunching and report-generation activities. - Administer the “who cares?” test
Read all written materials with a highly critical eye. Put yourself in a prospect’s shoes and carefully evaluate if everything you say in each individual piece is important and valuable to a prospect, or if there’s extraneous and unnecessary information. If the latter, revise or delete. - Be succinct, as readability is everything
Convey your messages in as few words as possible. What you write will be far more readable, deliver greater impact, and you’ll hold your readers’ attention. Some people feel that the more they use, the more intelligent they sound. They are wrong. - Differentiate, differentiate, differentiate
Concentrate on the distinct and specific advantages your company brings to the table. Make sure you emphasise what truly makes your organisation stand out. Longevity and a strong roster of clients in the prospect’s industry, and a Centre of Excellence devoted to the prospect’s in-scope functional processes, are examples of key differentiators. “Demonstrated BPO leadership” is not (but do you know a BPO provider that doesn’t make this claim?). - Focus on the benefits, not features, of your solution
What matters to prospects are the advantages they will gain from working with you. Maintain that focus in all your written communications. For the most part, prospects won’t care what contact centre technology you use – what’s important to them is how it enables improved customer service, reduced costs, etc. - Make sure it’s about the prospect, not you
You are understandably proud of your company and its capabilities. But those capabilities in and of themselves mean nothing to a prospect; you must always present how they will translate into measurable benefits for the prospect. Downplay the “us” (your company) and emphasise the “you” (the prospect). - Proof and edit before you publish
Materials littered with typos and grammatical errors zap your professional persona and unquestionably turn prospects away. If you don’t leverage the expertise of an industry-savvy writer/editor, at least run every single document through your word processing program’s grammar and spell-checker. You may be surprised at what your own eye fails to catch. - Provide proof points
Lofty statements lacking support of your claims do not give prospects confidence in your ability to deliver. Get specific about the types of clients you’ve worked with in a particular industry, and how long you’ve operated in that industry. Provide examples of your scalability, and explain the structural advantages that allow you to scale. Cite tangible, quantifiable results you’ve achieved for clients. - Storyboard before putting pen to paper
A storyboard is essentially an outline of the document you’ll be writing. It will sharpen your thinking, and allow your text to flow properly and deliver maximum impact. It is a valuable tool to employ for all written communications, but is critical when writing RFP responses as it will ensure you focus on the prospect’s needs, issues and pain points, your selling points relative to the prospect’s requirements, and help you identify and address gaps in your capabilities. - Use consistent style across all communications
Prospects equate consistency of style to professionalism and attention to detail. Thus, for example, you should always write in either “first person” or “third person”, but not a mix of the two. To ensure consistency among all the writers in your company – think beyond marketing staff to salespeople, account managers, bloggers, etc. – it helps to prepare, and enforce use of, a company “stylebook” that offers both general writing guidance and instructions on specific usage.
The Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme ends, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.” For those unfamiliar, Humpty is an egg. But if Humpty had been a well-crafted communication from an outsourcing service provider, there wouldn’t have been a need for any putting back together, as he or she wouldn’t have broken in the first place!
If you might like more information on this please contact Jolie, jolie.newman@proeditsolutions.com.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2011 edition of Outsource Magazine.