Stay Away From The Tech Talk To Connect With Your Customer - ISSUE 41 - 6/22/12

SIMPLIFY YOUR THOUGHTS AND IDEAS

A major concern with small business owners is that they focus too heavily on ‘Tech Jargon.’ Tech jargon comes in many forms since ‘Tech’ stems from the word ‘Technical’ and just about every industry uses computers/technology for their business as well as technical words to describe precision.

In other words, tech doesn’t specifically pertain to computers; it can also pertain to your industry which uses computers. Most people do not understand what the heck techies are talking about when they speak ‘Klingon’ (Star Trek) so why would you expect someone to understand you when you speak Venetian (a person from Venus)?

More and more people are becoming familiar with words such as ‘Megabyte,’ ‘Gigabyte,’ and ‘Terabyte,’ but you’d be amazed at how few people actually understand what they mean. For those of you whom I’m referring, ‘a Gigabyte is a form of measurement for storage capacity and/or is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage.’ (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte).

There are one thousand bytes in a megabyte, one thousand megabytes in a gigabyte, and one thousand gigabytes in a terabyte. Or, in the easiest form to understand, there are approximately seven thousand web pages per gigabyte (if you have a monthly allowance for the Internet on your cell phone, this pertains to you).

THE SOLUTION

I have worked in the technology field for many years and since I was in sales the majority of the time, I have personally spoken and interacted with thousands of people face-to-face. Let me tell you, when people constantly look at you with a look like they’re a deer in the headlights, you quickly realize very few people actually know what the heck you are talking about when using big words, complex ideas, and especially, tech jargon. I have had countless frustrating experiences of information dumping and overload causing people to feel overwhelmed with my thoughts and ideas so I slowly, but surely, moved away from speaking complexly and began simplifying.

There are many languages and industries in the world today and contrary to popular belief, most people have a very narrow understanding of anything outside of their respective professions and/or areas of expertise. If you want to deliver your ideas and thoughts to someone outside of your industry, you must always imagine yourself speaking to a child, especially if your company is in any way technologically related. Children obviously do not have a vast understanding of the world, nor do they have an area of expertise (with the exception of a few), so the method to use to ensure you are doing this correctly is to simplify your thoughts and ideas and to explain what you are talking about in significant detail.

Doing this will take some time and practice and may be frustrating in the beginning, but people will greatly appreciate you and will always come back for more. Becoming known as the ‘expert’ is not about making people feel stupid or belittled; rather, it’s about connecting and relating. The more you practice, the more you will have the latter rather than the former.