Years ago, I purchased a couple of really cool antiques from an estate sale. I was a single professional living in a thriving beach community. Did I really need an antique dining room table with six chairs and a highboy dresser? No. But they seemed to be one-of-a-kind and I perceived that I was getting a screaming deal.
As I got married and moved cross country, these two antiques followed me from home to home. During one move, both pieces were damaged. The moving company sent a wood-smith to my home to repair the damage, and both pieces looked as good as new.
I ended up hiring that same wood-smith to build a leaf for the dining room table and reupholster the chairs. He was very respectful and professional when he worked on my furniture. I paid him half of the money upfront and sent my antique table and chairs with him. Weeks went by. Months went by. The guy kept putting me off. Then he stopped answering his phone. I was out several hundreds of dollars and lost my prized possessions.
In desperation, I made one last phone call warning him that the police were now involved and that I wouldn’t press charges if the table and chairs were to magically appear on my front lawn. Viola. It worked. They were returned to me the next day. I never saw the guy again, but I did get the goods.
Fifteen years later, these two antiques are still in my possession. I’ve tried to sell them on several occasions. When we converted our dining room into a bedroom, the table and chairs ended up in storage. The other day, my husband asked me if he could give it away to his sister. My initial reaction was, “I want it.”
But then the real question appeared, “Do you really need it?” It’s been sitting in the garage for several years now. Letting go of the things we don’t really need is cleansing and a great spiritual exercise.
“Sure! Give it to your sister.”
Are you holding on to things that you really don’t need?
In communications, we need to take the same kind of inventory of our words and the way we are promoting our company and products. At Eye-To-Eye, we have found that the new year is a great time to enter into this process.
Many of our clients are taking a fresh look at messaging and SEO optimization to ensure that they are not just saying the things that their customers WANT to hear, but that they are positioning their marketing materials around what customers NEED to know about making an informed purchasing decision.
Keeping communications simple and to the point is no easy task. Asking whether you need to use this word or that word will make all the difference when creating new messaging. Be very deliberate and precise about your communication. And keep asking, “Do I really need it?”
