Jettison the jargon

Could you possibly be confusing your prospects with business jargon? I’m sure you wouldn’t do it intentionally, but if you don’t pay close attention to the words you’re using, you might be doing exactly that.

For example, just the other day I got an email asking me if I’d be interested in speaking at an upcoming IFC conference. While I was delighted to be invited to speak, I had no idea what IFC stood for. In an attempt to find out, I Googled it but ended up even more mystified. Was it the International Fundraising Congress, the Investing Financing Council or the Inter-Fraternity Connection?

Turns out it was none of these. However, it did get me thinking about how often we use business words or acronyms and just assume the people we’re talking to know what we mean. In doing this, we risk creating a rift between ourselves and our prospects. They get stuck trying to figure out what we mean and may be too embarrassed to ask, and as a result, they can’t pay attention to what we’re saying. This doesn’t help us at all.