You don’t have to be a bitter burn-out to get the feeling that in some respects, all the marketing hype surrounding products and services is merely a means to earn money as opposed to providing substance. We’ve seen this in multiple areas, from consultants who promise perfect returns to people who blow hot hair on LinkedIn, sometimes it’s important to look past all of the jargon and see what’s really being said.
It’s not easy to do that when you might not have the means or understanding to cut through such discourse, however. For example, when structuring your business you may notice that consultants, coaches, guides, services, and more reach out to promise you amazing returns no matter the practice they offer.
In order to avoid scams or paying for services you have little need of, it’s important to be mindful of your intentions. In this post, we’ll discuss a few practices you can use to subvert the nonsense, so you can structure your business in peace:
Focus On Results, Not Buzzwords
All those fancy buzzwords and jargon explainers tech companies love to throw around? Most of it is just marketing fluff designed to make them sound cutting-edge. When vetting potential services or solutions, train yourself to tune out buzzwords and parse what you’re actually being offered.
You can ask them to plainly describe the actual results and real-world benefits their offering will provide for your specific business scenarios. If they can't articulate that clearly without relying on hype, or actually discussing how their help will assist your firm in particular, that's a good sgn to move on.
Request Tangible Demos
It's very, very easy for tech vendors to make impressive promises about boosting efficiency 2000% or automating your revenue cycle for disruptive capability in dynamic markets, or whatever other phrase annoying people on TED Talk stages say.
But don't just take their word for it – request (or demand) to see tangible demonstrations of how their product or service actually works using your own data and business processes. Any viable service curated by people who understand your firm should be able to provide real proof of concept for your company, not just recycled showcases anyone could see. That might include showing testimonials to start.
If they’re a new service, don’t worry, you should still request this, because those are the firms trying to work hard on achieving their first client, and if anything they’ll go above and beyond.
Check for Transparency
One surefire way to cut through potential hype is partnering with companies that have a transparent, open approach to their vision of the industry or practices. Look for services like the best SEO agency that proactively document and explain their methodologies in plain language – even on the front page of their website. If a service seems incapable of clearly articulating how they do what they do, it might even show they don’t understand it yourself. After all, they say a mark of true understanding is being able to simply describe a concept.
With this advice, we hope you can more easily cut through that tech jargon, allowing you to structure your business with confidence.
