12 Better Ways to Use Your Language Skills

Superior language skills build the confidence to engage and persuade more people. Here are 12 ways to put those skills to work while convincing others that your way is best:

1. Teach the vernacular of your business to others, and they will feel more included in the overall experience.

2. Use the language of your industry to give you “insider’s prestige.”

3. Recognize that a superior grasp of language is one of the dominant factors in sales success.

4. Use language to generate empathy.

5. Lose the tired questions (“Do you play golf?”) and replace them with interesting ones (“How will the recent fires affect your expansion plans in Canada?”). You’ll be more interesting to your buyer and learn crucial information.

6. Control conversations by strategically including terms like “recommend,” “suggest” and “advise.” Others will follow your lead.

7. Use permission questions to soften your approach: “May I ask you a question?”

8. Use adjectives to make your descriptions more vivid: “elegant design” and “compelling point.”

9. Find relevant examples to prove your points.

10. Metaphors, similes and analogies remain the bedrock of effective language skills.

11. Use appropriate language; slang coming from an executive sounds silly.

12. Practice saying things three different ways. Think basic, intermediate and sophisticated. To that end, I hope you found this blog post helpful. I anticipate you will find instructive ways to implement this material. And perhaps I have assuaged your anxiety about speaking more eloquently.