Corporate Gobbledygook ... The Four Too's vs. The Four Tools


From personal experience and conversations with many experts in the field, there is reasonable agreement that most corporate sales, marketing and PR lingo suffers from

"The Four Too’s."

  • Too wordy

  • Too complex

  • Too confusing

  • Too valueless

Agree or Disagree?

Why is that?

Essentially it boils down to:

  1. Trying to be all things to all people at all times

  2. Not knowing you can’t be all things to all people at all times

  3. Trying to sound really sophisticated, cool, intelligent, intricate and inclusive

And finally, the biggie,not understanding your customer/buyer.

For example, in a recent technology analyst study of executives who were likely to buy enterprise software, it was discovered that large ERP vendors promoted speeds, feeds and technology innovation to their marketplace. These promotions more often than not entail lengthy and wordy descriptive obfuscations (yes, I know what it means, I’m trying to sound really sophisticated, cool, intelligent and inclusive).

But Guess What?

Buyers don’t care about that. Nope. They essentially want one thing: understanding.

Simple understanding.

Clear, short, concise messages and understanding.

Understanding of What?

Understanding them, their businesses, their processes. They don’t want or need the wordy intellectual technical features and functions tomes. Keep it simple! Less is more. They throw away all the cutesy, excessively long-winded brochures as soon as you leave the room.

Some other findings of the study were interesting as well. Buyers would pay for

  • high integrity,

  • fast return on investment,

  • inexpensive operation,

  • easy implementation, and

  • excellent service.

But how is that different from 20 years ago? And isn’t that applicable to any buyer?

Buyers Want What They Want

Buyers are pretty basic. They want what they want. Understanding and practicality.

Would You Buy From This Company?

"We provide"

  • low integrity,

  • no return on investment,

  • expensive products,

  • hard-to-implement products, and

  • the world’s worst customer service.


Just a wild guess ... but I’m thinking not.


The Value Of Being a Simpleton

I like simple messages (I’m a simpleton) that give me four tools to combat the four too’s.

The Four Tools

  1. What do you do?

  2. How do you do it?

  3. What makes you different from your competitors?

  4. Why should I buy from you (value proposition)?

I know.

Too simple.

But, having recently read this message,

"We build, sell and support hypothetical superluminal quantum particle applications with ERP, CRM, BPM, MRM and PLM functionality targeted at vertical market particularities with platform-neutral ‘LMNOP" interoperability.’ "

I find I still prefer

  1. What do you do?

  2. How do you do it?

  3. What makes you different from your competitors?

  4. Why should I buy from you (value proposition)?

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