Why You’re Already Multilingual, and How It Can Help Your Business

Photo by Plutor.

No matter what our background, most of us can speak a foreign language. One that’s completely opaque to anyone who might be listening in. It’s the language of your industry.

So what’s your second language? Is it ‘web dev’? (Take this quick quiz – have you ever used the words ‘CSS’, ‘XHTML’, ’sFIR3′ or ‘Javascript’ face-to-face with a client?). Or do you lapse into ‘designer’ or ‘blogger’ when you get excited?

Whatever your second language is, chances are either you or your clients are losing something vital in the translation. Every industry creates jargon, acronyms and product-words that aren’t in any dictionary, and mean nothing to outsiders. And then individual companies have their own variations on the dialect.

Some industries don’t use any uncompressed nouns at all, like travel people:

“FYI we’ve got 250 VIP’s coming on AA from LAX, we did a deal with NYCVB at PCMA to keep their ADR at $750.”

Speaking the jargon fluently is like a secret handshake that admits you to the club.
That’s why most industries hold an annual convention, so people can cluster around the bar happily chatting in fluent industry-speak.

Because if you belong to, say, the Asphalt Pavement Association (Official motto: ‘There’s a lot more to asphalt than meets the eye’), there’s nothing better than some quality time with others who share your black, sticky passion. They never tire of hearing about it, unlike your friends and family.

There are three important lessons in this for freelancers in any field.

1. Will Civilians Understand It?

If you spend a lot of time surrounded by industry people, you can start thinking everyone talks that way. You do it yourself, talking to your client about compression and applets and colour grading while they nod politely, so you can hardly blame them for their buzzwords.

Your job is to help the client communicate with normal humans by weeding out their jargon. Whenever they come out with a buzzword or acronym during a verbal brief, stop them and ask “How could we explain that in layman’s terms?” (Plus this disguises the fact that you might not know what they’re talking about.)

This can be a slow task, but worth it. You produce better work, and as a bonus, you learn a lot more about the client’s industry.

This knowledge becomes the foundation of your beautiful long-term relationship with the client. In the client’s eyes, there are a million freelancers out there. But if you’re the one with the knowledge of asphalt paving issues, you’re indispensable. You’re on their team.

2. Impressing Insiders To Win Clients

On the flip side, sometimes a little jargon pays off – for you. If you want work from clients in a specific industry, take the time to get to know their language. Go and meet some of them informally, and write down as many of their industry words, acronyms and sayings as you can. Then use them when you make a new business pitch. It’s like visiting a foreign country – the locals appreciate that you’ve taken the effort to learn a few phrases, and they’ll be nice to you.

While others are talking to the client about fonts, you’ll be talking to them about how your design creations can help them deliver increased brand recognition across all Tier 1 retail channels and achieve leadership across the Instant Convenience (Frozen) product category. Or whatever it is they do.

“Now you’re speaking my language,” they’ll think, because you literally are.

3. Giving An Outside Perspective Can Increase Your Value

Thinking this way creates one of the great source of value from freelancers as the client relationship develops. You aren’t just an extra pair of hands to pick up the slack – you provide a valuable outside perspective. You work for a lot of different organizations and you’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.

Big companies love to hire external management consultants to give them an outside perspective – at $800 per hour.

Ironically, these consultants preserve their mystique by presenting their findings in hyper-business language that nobody can understand – “Leveraging synergies of deliverables across new Best Practice paradigm” and so forth. They’ve taken freelancing to its ultimate lucrative level.

No matter what your field of expertise, you can learn from the consultants’ approach. Clients are much more likely to listen to your suggestions if you can put them in terms they understand. Use the client’s own language to show your expertise can make them money or take their problems go away, rather than talking of ass-kickin’ code or Cannes-worthy art direction.

You become a unique, valuable resource rather than just another name in their freelance contacts list.

Ian Whitworth is an award-winning creative director and principal of A Lizard Drinking, and a founder of audiovisual company Scene Change where he writes a blog on how to craft a clearer message, particularly in meetings and presentations.