In Relationship Building, Save Formalities for the Wedding

Futurist Aldous Huxley once commented, “Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.” How right he was! Ultimately, all relationships are based on words.

Here’s a related truism: The building blocks of all customer relationships are the words we use. And too often, as marketers-in-haste, we don’t use the words that maximize the relationship. The difference between raw information transmission and the generation of receptivity and that magical effect – rapport – can be encapsulated in two words: information optimizing.

The typical businessperson writes a dispassionate business letter with dispassionate verbiage: “Our company ships orders the following business day.” The one-to-one savvy businessperson recognizes an opportunity to add some glue to the potential relationship: “I’ll see to it that we’ll ship your order within 24 hours.”

Beyond relationships, any marketer has hidden power at his or her fingertips – the power to change the target-individual’s perception without changing the facts. An easy example of information optimizing is the difference between two words – if and when. Many people describing the benefits of a business relationship with their company use the two words interchangeably. That’s a mistake.

A quick analysis shows the difference: if is conditional, whereas when implies certainty. Is this a major difference? In a communication, whether verbal, written, printed, e-mailed or broadcast, you bet it is. The alert force-communicator (and I hope each of us is a force-communicator) uses when to suggest something will happen and if to suggest it won’t happen. Could any two-word projections be more different?

For example, suppose we’re discussing automobile insurance and I want you to buy some. I’ll say, “When you have a claim,” because I want to suggest you will have a claim. But if I want you to buy the automobile, I don’t want to suggest anything will happen, so I’ll say, “If anything ever should go wrong…” This suggests that it probably won’t.

Those two little examples aren’t even the tip of the iceberg in the magical world of information optimizing. We have hundreds – no, make that thousands – of communications techniques we too often overlook or ignore because we’re busy or we think, arrogantly, “They’ll understand what I mean.” Oh, will they? Vendors mail a catalog or background information and put on the envelope, “This is the information you requested.” All right, what does that mean? It means the recipient asked for the information. Smart marketers say so more straightforwardly: “This is the information you asked for.” The difference between “requested” and “asked for” is the difference between arm’s-length and relationship marketing. In fact, in a new era of Internet-influenced customer relationships, we now will occasionally see an even balder statement: “You asked for this.” Before rejecting this, ask yourself which envelope treatment is most likely to get you to open the mailing.

Too often a marketer lets a phony sense of propriety damage a burgeoning relationship. That person writes (or, worse, says): “You may return it.” This transforms a relationship that should have emphasized equivalence into a game of “Mother, may I?” The relationship-wise marketer knows better: “Just send it back.” Am I suggesting that written communications should parallel the way you’d speak to your customers? You bet I am.

TURNING A STATEMENT INTO A PROMISE

Relationships are based on emotion far more than they’re based on intellect. And we all know the emotion-over-intellect rule: When emotion and intellect come into conflict, emotion always wins. The value of this rule in customer relationship management can’t be overstated. Taking the spats and monocle off the words you write or speak draws the customer into your rhetorical arms.

So you wouldn’t write, “Members save more than ten times the annual cost of their memberships.” Rather, you’d write, as a starting point, “You’ll save more than ten times your nominal membership fee.” And why is this a starting point? Because the one-to-one marketer knows how to drive the target: “You’re going to save more than 10 times the nominal cost of your preferred membership.”

These are primitive examples. You can compile your own list of words to eschew (that is, avoid – if we’re following the emotion-over-intellect rule). Start with indeed, approximately, circular, peruse, incur, omit, and my personal negative favorite, utilize. Once you start, you’ll be astounded at the way replacing these words with more personalized ones adds octane to your messages. That’s communicating with power!