Every industry and profession have their own language and terms that are unique to them. Try these examples:
- Restauranteur talk about eight-toppers.
- Insurance guys speak of risk, exposure and not-admitted carriers.
- IT people speak about plug-and-play and cookies (and IT itself is an industry term–information technology).
- Estimators are asked to “SWAG” a price.
- Marketing people do a SWOT analysis.
And we are, of course, bombarded daily with sports terms being used to characterize business and personal situations.
OK, stop already. Before you speak, think about your audience:
- Do they know the term you are about to use without you having to explain it?
- Do you really need to use the term to describe what you are about to talk about?
- Is there another way to tell the story?
Examine yourself: are you using a lot of terms people you engage with don’t know or recognize? Are you not communicating when you think you are being perfectly clear?
So, get off the jargon bandwagon. Think about who is listening to your story before you tell it. If your elevator speech is peppered with industry-specific terms, rewrite it. By being plain speaking you are being clear to your audience and communicating your message.
You might just get heard.
Relentless
