What Are Your Prospects Hearing?

Unfortunately they can’t hear what’s in your head. If they could, they'd automatically know all the great benefits of your product or service, and you’d be able to attract more clients instantly.

In Made to Stick, one of my all-time favorite business books, the authors explain an experiment in psychology that shows how the curse of knowledge--all that stuff in our heads--can make effective communication almost impossible.

In the experiment, a group of “tappers” are asked to choose one of several very well-known songs (“Happy Birthday to You,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” etc.) and to tap that song on a table while another person listens and attempts to guess what song it is.

Only 3% of the listeners are able to determine what song is being tapped. But what’s really interesting is that the tappers expected to be much more successful in the exercise—on average they predicted a 50% success rate.

What’s really amusing is the flabbergasted expressions on the tappers’ faces as they realize the listeners aren’t getting it.

What the tappers don’t understand is that while they’re hearing in their heads all the instrumentation, melody and lyrics that make up the song, the listeners are only hearing inarticulate tapping that sounds like Morse code.

It’s the things in our heads we don’t even know are there that prevent us from getting through to our audience.

So how do you get out of your own head and get through to your audience?

It’s almost impossible to overcome the curse of knowledge without getting some outside help. One of the best sources of this help is a client willing to read your ad, white paper or case study.

Present the draft with the question, “does this communicate the value of our offering?” and you’ll get some good clues on how to fill in the melody for your listeners.

You can also try putting yourself in your next-door neighbor’s shoes (unless she’s in the same business as you). Get away from your draft for a couple days and come back to it with the question, “would my neighbor understand what I’m saying?”

By making your document that straightforward, you’ll be forced to eliminate the jargon and opaque abstractions that are the curse of knowledge.