By Jane Bayler, The Smart Connector. Former MD of FutureBrand, 20+ years in global brand strategy.
Stop telling potential clients you’re “strategic,” “experienced,” or an “innovative problem-solver.” They don’t believe you. Not because you’re lying, but because these words are meaningless abstractions. They are the background noise of LinkedIn, the corporate jargon you were trained to use that now renders you invisible.
The single biggest shift you must make, from corporate leader to independent authority, is in how you communicate value. Your old job rewarded you for summarising, for abstracting complexity into a clean executive summary. Your new business demands the opposite. It demands concrete, visceral detail. The kind of detail that proves you’ve been in the trenches. The kind of detail that builds instant trust with sceptical, high-level buyers.
Don’t tell me you deliver “business transformation.” Tell me you took a founder, who was working 80-hour weeks and about to burn out, and helped him build a leadership team that let him take his first month-long holiday in a decade. Don’t tell me you were nervous. Tell me your hands trembled.
I was in a coaching session recently with a former Big Four partner. A brilliant man, sharp as a tack. But his messaging was a wall of corporate platitudes. He was describing the feeling of anxiety his clients had before working with him. He said, “They feel a lot of pressure and nervousness about the future.” I stopped him. “That tells me nothing,” I said. “Instead of saying, ‘I felt nervous before I went on stage,’ say, ‘my hands trembled as I adjusted the microphone.’” The room went quiet. He just nodded. He got it. The first is a label. The second is a movie. People don’t buy labels. They buy the feeling the movie gives them.
Your Corporate Communication Habits Are Killing Your Credibility
In the world you came from, abstraction was a sign of seniority. You climbed the ladder by demonstrating you could rise above the messy details and see the “big picture.” Your communication was designed for efficiency inside a trusted system. You’d present a slide deck filled with bullet points like “Implement Synergistic Growth Paradigms” and no one would bat an eye, because they all spoke the same language within the corporate bubble.
Now, you’re on the outside. Your buyer isn’t your colleague. They don’t have the shared context or the assumed trust. They are time-poor, sceptical, and inundated with generic pitches from a sea of consultants who all sound the same. When you use that same abstract, high-level language, you don’t sound senior. You sound generic. You sound like you’re hiding something. You sound like you’ve read the book but never actually run the play.
Specificity is the currency of trust for the independent expert. It’s the ultimate proof of work. Anyone can claim to offer “strategic guidance.” Very few can describe the exact, gut-wrenching conversation they had with a CEO who had to lay off 10% of his staff, and how they navigated the board meeting that followed. Which one would you hire?
From Abstract Noun to Active Verb
The core of this shift is moving from nouns to verbs. From states to actions. From adjectives to evidence.
Your prospects don’t buy “clarity.” They buy the ability to finally write the first page of their book after staring at a blank screen for six months. They don’t buy “efficiency.” They buy getting their Friday afternoons back. They don’t buy “growth.” They buy the moment they can tell their biggest competitor they just won the industry’s most coveted client.
This is the essence of getting your message to market fit right. It’s not about finding fancier adjectives. It’s about finding the concrete reality your work creates in someone’s life or business. You must learn to describe the “before” state not as a list of problems, but as a visceral experience. And the “after” state not as a list of benefits, but as a tangible new reality.
Your buyer doesn’t purchase your abstract ‘transformation’; they purchase the tangible, specific outcome you can describe with visceral clarity.
This requires a different kind of listening. When you talk to clients, don’t just listen for the business problem. Listen for the language they use. Listen for the metaphors. Listen for the emotion. When a client says, “I feel like I’m drowning in paperwork,” your job isn’t to sell them a “workflow optimisation solution.” It’s to talk about the feeling of finally coming up for air.
This is how you become the Chosen First System in your market. Not by being the loudest, but by being the most specific and, therefore, the most believable.
The Commercial Case for Concrete Language
This isn’t an academic writing exercise. This is a commercial imperative. Specificity directly impacts your bottom line in three ways:
- It justifies premium pricing. Generalists get commodity prices. Specialists who can prove their expertise with detailed case stories and examples command premium fees. When you can describe a client’s problem better than they can themselves, they assume you have the solution. This is a core tenet of building your authority as a Brand CEO.
- It shortens the sales cycle. Trust is the lubricant of commerce. Visceral, specific language builds trust faster than any brochure or slide deck. When a prospect feels understood on a deep level, objections melt away. They move from “who is this person?” to “how can I work with them?” in a fraction of the time.
- It creates magnetic client attraction. When your content is rich with specific detail, it acts as a filter. The wrong people are repelled by it, while your ideal clients are drawn to it like a magnet. They see their own situation reflected in your stories and think, “Finally, someone who gets it.”
Stop trying to sound impressive. Start trying to be understood. The former is easy and achieves nothing. The latter is hard work and changes everything. Dig into the details of your best work, as I outline in my book, The Smart Connector. Find the trembling hands, the beads of sweat, the sigh of relief. That’s where the real value is. And that’s where the money is.
Common Mistakes in Messaging
- Leading with credentials, not problems. Opening with “25 years of experience in…” is a waste of your prospect’s attention. Start with their problem, described in vivid detail, and they will assume you have the experience to solve it.
- Using “adjective salads.” Stringing together a list of positive but generic words like “strategic, bespoke, innovative, seamless, robust.” This is a desperate attempt to sound valuable that actually communicates nothing. Pick one and prove it with a story.
- Describing the tool, not the result. Saying “I help businesses implement Agile methodologies” is talking about your screwdriver. Instead, say “I help tech teams ship product updates in two weeks instead of six months, without burning out their best engineers.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Isn’t this just storytelling?
It’s a specific, potent component of storytelling. It’s not about spinning a long yarn, but about using evidentiary detail to make a single point powerfully. Think of it as the difference between a blurry photo and a pin-sharp 8K image. Both show a scene, but only one feels real.
My clients are C-suite; don’t they want high-level summaries?
In a report, yes. But to get their attention and earn the right to send that report, you need to cut through the noise. Specificity is what gets you the meeting. It shows you respect their intelligence and aren’t just another consultant recycling buzzwords. You can be specific without being verbose.
I’m not a natural writer. How can I apply this?
You don’t have to be. Record yourself talking about a past client success as if you were telling a colleague over a coffee. Use a transcription service. The specific, powerful details are already in your spoken language. Your job is to capture and refine them, not invent them from scratch.
Does this apply to my LinkedIn profile too?
Absolutely. It’s even more critical there. Your headline, About section, and posts are your storefront. Replace “Helping companies achieve growth” with “I help B2B SaaS founders get from 50 to 150 demos a month by fixing their broken positioning.” One is forgettable, the other gets a click.
How specific is too specific?
It’s too specific if it violates client confidentiality or gets lost in technical jargon that doesn’t serve the story. The detail must illuminate the outcome or the pain. If the detail doesn’t build trust or create a picture in the reader’s mind, cut it.
Is there a framework for finding these details?
Less a rigid framework, more a mental model. Think like a film director or a detective. For any claim you make, ask: “What’s the physical evidence? What did it look like, sound like, feel like?” Instead of “The client was happy,” ask “What did they do that showed they were happy?”
Stop describing the label on the jar. Show them what’s inside.
This is just one principle of powerful communication. To see how it fits into a complete messaging system, download the Power Messaging Swipe File. It’s a collection of real-world examples and templates to help you translate your expertise into language that attracts and converts high-value clients. Get it here: [LINK TO Power Messaging Swipe File]
