Is that how you talk in real life?

Do yourself a favor today. Print out copies of your “about us” Web page, your overview or capabilities brochure, a handful of your most commonly-used email templates, and a couple of your sales scripts.

Read them out loud to yourself. Now read them out loud to someone else on your team (ideally someone who didn’t write them and isn’t super familiar with them).

Can you read them with a straight face? Would you really use that language in a conversation with a customer or prospect?

Way too often, we write “formal” messaging in our sales and marketing materials to make ourselves sound smarter. But what we’re really doing is creating a greater distance between us and those customers and prospects we want to engage.

Formal language may imply authority and leadership, but it doesn’t make you sound like a partner or trusted supplier.

Think about the brands you most favor. They don’t talk down to you. They don’t try to impress you with their vocabulary. They talk to you, relate to you, make you smile.

Look at that copy again. What will you do with it now?