NEVER PUT THIS LANGUAGE IN YOUR PITCH DECK
By Tim Williams
Take a close look at your standard pitch deck, the “about us” section of your website, or your new business materials. Highlight every instance of words like “leading,” “excellence,” and “innovative.”
Claims of leadership, quality, and excellence have all lost their meaning, not only because they’re ordinary terms but because so many companies have used — and misused — these expressions over the last century of business history.
The top 10
In professional services, there is a clear “top 10” when it comes to pointless claims:
1. Full service is by far the worst offender. Virtually every firm says this, which means it no longer serves as any kind of differentiator. It’s also an unauthentic claim. No matter how large your firm, no organization can promise or deliver true “full service” in any category.
2. Integrated runs a very close second. What reason would a prospective client have to believe that you’re not integrated? Of course your firm has a unified business model and organizational structure. It’s simply not credible to assert that your firm is one of the rare organizations with effective internal coordination and cooperation.
3. Right on the heels of “integrated” is wide range of services and its close cousin wide range of experience. Not only are these promises non-differentiating, they also represent the opposite of what your clients are really looking for: experience in their category.
4. Promising a customized approach is a complete waste of pixels on the screen. It goes without saying that your firm will apply custom thinking to client problems.
5. The pledge of responsiveness is table stakes. Alleging that you are nimbler than your competitors lacks both credibility and originality.
6. Avowing that you are strategic is merely stating that you employ intelligent people, which again is widely expected of a professional service firm.
7. Is your firm dedicated to its clients? It had better be.
8. To say your firm is uniquely focused on results is like saying a brand of toothpaste gets teeth clean. Of course you’re in the business of results. Why else would a client want to hire you?
9. Specific to the world of agencies, storytelling has now entered the pantheon of vacuous claims. In its infancy, many years ago, it was an intriguing way to frame what agencies do. Today, however, it is a ubiquitous pretension in marketing communications firms.
10. Last but not least, to say your firm is different because of its friendly, fun-loving culture puts you in the company of thousands of other firms making the same claim. Your prospects engage you for your expertise, not your jocularity.
Saying it doesn’t make it so
In the agency world, note how the firms with the best creative reputations rarely talk about their creative reputation. In fact, the degree to which an agency talks about being creative and the likelihood that they actually produce outstanding creative work are inversely related.
The very best firms don’t claim excellence, they exude it. They are unobtrusively confident of their abilities, operating by the maxim “under promise and overdeliver.” They don’t talk about being committed to continuous self-improvement; they just do it, and it shows in the caliber of their work and their people.
The acid test
One of the most useful litmus tests for your company’s use of language is simply to consider what it would look like to claim the opposite. If the opposite claim is nonsensical, you’re likely using ineffective, meaningless terms.
For example, ponder the opposite of “full service.” Is that “partial service?” Similarly, is there a plausible opposite of “integrated?” Would that be “disintegrated?” And the opposite of “customized thinking?” Presumably “cookie cutter solutions?”
None of these common claims measure up to what constitutes an effective, discriminating business proposition.
So search your new business materials and presentations for this undifferentiating language and hit the delete key. Because every time you use one of these overworked phrases, you are telling your prospective clients, “We are exactly the same as everyone else.”