A huge response to last months Editorial ‘The Definitive Guide to PowerPoint’ with many of you commenting on how useful you found it and how you all wished PowerPoint would just die an ugly and painful death. Frankly, I agree with most of you that there are very few places where PowerPoint is of any use at all but such is the business world’s devotion to it that I can’t see it disappearing anytime soon. Many of the executives I work with are addicted to it and can’t conceive of life without it.

It’s another one of those ‘everyone else does it this way so we have to do it that way as well’ things. In truth of course not everyone else does ‘it’ that way – just everyone who isn’t very good at ‘it’ or hasn’t given ‘it’ much thought. So, this month The Editorial will delve in to a couple of other pieces of conventional wisdom and explain why, from a communication point of view, you might want to consider doing things differently.

Good, Better, Best or should it be the other way around?

Everyone does it – offer 3 options starting with the least desirable and finishing up with the most desirable. If you are like most people you believe in showing the cheapest option first when discussing things with a potential customer. The problem is that is the wrong way to do it and smart organizations already know this.

Think about the last time you flew somewhere in a large plane. Any airline will take you through a very particular boarding sequence – they will force you to walk through First Class, then Business Class and finally Economy Class. Every time this happens you see the bigger, wider seats, the greater leg room, the larger personal video screens and more often than not you get to see the passengers enjoying these creature comforts being offered Champagne or a premium juice.

You then get to contrast that experience with the comparatively cramped seat you have been wedged into in Economy Class, the behemoth sitting next to you who has somehow rendered both of your armrests unusable and a screen you are unable to view because the person in front of you has put their seat all the way back and started to snore.

To make matters worse all that separates you from what you should have is a curtain!

You desperately want what you know you should have, what you deserve – First or Business Class. You hate sitting in economy because you are acutely aware of what you are missing out on. And that is the difference. The good, better, best approach is all about what you could have. The first class, business class, economy class approach is all about what you should have. We can all equivocate about ‘could haves’ but ’should haves’ are harder to ignore. They eat away at us. Show me what I should have first and the comparison is all the more stark, the desire to have it all the greater and the result is a much higher percentage of customers who will want to upgrade every chance they get.

Break the habit of a lifetime and try showing your customer your most expensive bells and whistles options first. As they take a sharp intake of breath at the astronomical price show them the almost as good option with a slightly more affordable astronomical price. By the time you get to the cheap option your customer will have trouble seeing it as an option at all. They have already seen what they should have and for most it is impossible to ignore.

Enclosed herewith please find…

When are people going to realize that business language has changed and that the centuries old cliches that everyone uses are boring, impersonal and have no place in the modern world? Expressions like ‘Please be informed’, ‘Kindly be advised’ and ‘I am writing to bring to your attention’ should have been binned a long time ago. They are relics from an age where passive voice was used largely as a device for avoiding any sort of responsibility and pretending that you were never talking to a real person in the first place. Today’s business writers should use active voice, which is more alive, more focused, more personalised and much more interesting and clear.

Be natural, relaxed, friendly and ditch the old-fashioned, long-winded jargon of the past. Get rid of the standard, boring cliches of yesteryear and write in a way that actually reflects your personality.

Have you accidentally sold your soul lately?

GameStation, a British computer game retailer, added an “immortal soul” clause to the contract signed by online shoppers on April 1, 2010. Thousands of customers agreed to the following stipulation: “By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamestation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions.”

Yes, it was an April Fool’s Day joke; GameStation will not be enforcing its ownership rights but it pays to read these things before you sign up don’t you think?

Seriously… get in touch

Let me know if there is anything you would like clarified or anything you would like to debate when it comes to any conventional wisdom that you remain unconvinced of. For those of you who would like more of an ongoing conversation I would encourage you to have a look at the new integrated website at www.brettrutledge.com and check out the blog. See you next month.