You didn’t build your business by accident. You’re an expert. You’ve put in the hours, earned the stripes, and solved problems your competitors haven’t even spotted yet.
So why isn’t your inbox bursting full of enquiries?
The tough reality is that the expertise that makes you excellent at your work is actively killing your sales conversations. Every time you speak (or write a webpage), you may be building a wall between you and the people who need your help.
You’re not alone in this. Most business owners fall into the same trap – they get so deep into their craft that they forget how to talk like a human being and assume that everyone else has the same specialist knowledge.
When Expertise Becomes a Barrier
There’s a phenomenon in business called Expert Blindness. It’s what happens when you’ve been doing something for so long that you forget what it’s like to not understand it.
You start using internal language and industry abbreviations. Technical specifications that mean everything to you and nothing to your customer.
A manufacturing business talks about “ISO-certified quality management systems” when their customers just want to know that their order will arrive on time, every time.
A marketing agency sells “integrated omnichannel customer journey optimisation” when businesses are asking “will this get me more sales?”
This isn’t about being smart or dumb. It’s about friction.
This Friction Is Costing You Sales
Every piece of jargon in your messaging creates drag. It slows people down and makes them work harder to understand what you’re offering.
You’ve got to remember customers are busy, busy, busy (like you) and they won’t work harder. They’ll just leave.
Think about the last time you tried to buy something complicated. Insurance, maybe. Or business software.
Remember that feeling when the salesperson started throwing around terminology you didn’t understand? The slight panic of nodding along whilst secretly having no idea what they were talking about?
You didn’t feel stupid. You felt annoyed. And you probably went looking for someone who could explain it in plain English. That’s exactly what’s happening to your potential customers right now.
Your competitors aren’t necessarily better than you. They’re just easier to understand.
And in a world where attention spans are measured in seconds, easier wins.
You can continue to burn money each month and achieve traffic to your site from Google Ads, social media, maybe even some print advertising and people will find you, but they won’t necessarily convert. Because your messaging isn’t clear and doesn’t stick.
I’ve seen businesses spend thousands on beautiful websites, slick brochures, and professional photography – then torpedo it all with messaging that reads like a boardroom presentation. Stiff. Formal. Completely detached from how actual humans talk to each other, as if talking in another language.
So How Do You Fix Things?
If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, here’s where to start:
Audit your current messaging.
Pull up your homepage, your About page, and your most recent proposal. Read them out loud. Every time you stumble or have to re-read a sentence, that’s friction. Circle those bits.
Give them the “Pub Pitch”.
Imagine you’re at the pub and someone asks what you do. If you start talking about ‘optimised infrastructure,’ you’ll notice they start zoning out or they’ll go get another round. If you say, ‘I make sure your office tech doesn’t break so you can go home at 5 PM,’ you’ve got their attention. Write like that.
Hunt down the jargon.
Make a list of every technical term, acronym, or “professional” phrase you use. For each one, ask: would my customer use this word? If not, bin it or translate it into words they normally use.
Focus on outcomes, not processes.
Most of your customers don’t care about your methodology – they care about what changes for them. Swap “We implement comprehensive quality assurance protocols” for “Your orders arrive right, every time.”
Get an outside opinion.
Show your messaging to someone who doesn’t work in your industry. If they can’t explain back to you what you do and why it matters, you’ve still got work to do.
If you’re too close to your business to see it clearly…
It’s sometimes almost impossible to read the label when you’re sitting inside the jar. If you’re worried that your messaging is too fluffy or that expert blindness is costing you sales, a second opinion can be a great guide.
Have a chat with your local marketing agency or freelancer to see if they can support with a top level review. I myself offer businesses a Straight-Talk Strategy Session designed to clear the fog. In 63 minutes, we look at current messaging across the company and figure out exactly where it’s losing people.
I strip away the jargon and find the words that really make customers stop and listen. No 50-page documents, just 63 minutes of clarity and a simple 1, 2, 3 Roadmap so you know exactly what to fix.
What Changes When Your Message Becomes Clear
When you strip away the expert language and start talking like a human, three things happen fast:
- First, your conversion rate improves. People who visit your website or read your marketing materials can understand what you’re offering. No translation required.
- Second, the quality of your enquiries goes up.
When your message is clear, you attract people who genuinely need what you provide, not tyre-kickers trying to figure out if you’re relevant to them.
- Thirdly, your sales conversations get easier.
You’re no longer spending the first 15 minutes explaining what you do because your marketing already did that heavy lifting.
The businesses getting this right aren’t necessarily the biggest or the flashiest but the ones who’ve realised that clarity is a competitive advantage. The best marketing doesn’t want to sound like marketing, instead be that helpful guide simply talking to another person who needs help. And that’s a language everyone understands.
