Words Matters: Semantics in Technology Sales

I’ve been writing in some way for around 15 years. I wrote for The Collegian, the Ashland University student paper, for The Fraternity Advisor, for Fansided, even for my friends at Hyland. Over the course of my work, I’ve covered many topics and devoted quite a lot of digital ink in the search of the perfect wording for whatever the issue of the day may be. It shouldn’t surprise me that after all of this time in a technology sales role, I’ve learned to live with and loathe a handful of phrases that, on the surface, don’t make a lot of sense.

I am reminded of an old George Carlin skit about the idioms we use every day. There’s a prolonged bit about the phrase “down the tubes”, as if there is some gigantic hole leading to who knows where, that always sticks in my mind. It has me thinking about the words and phrases we use with colleagues and customers. At the risk of being a grammar snob, word police, insert syntactical snark here, there are a few specific phrases in my line of work that are worth the thought exercise of considering what we say, what we really mean, and how we can communicate it better to our audiences.

At the top of my list is the phrase, “Do more with less”. You see this phrase everywhere in sales pitch decks and brochures. You hear it in conversations about value propositions and ROI outcomes (which, as an aside, these phrases live on Buzzword Bingo Cards everywhere too). Sure, “Do more with less” is a problem organizations may vocalize when they evaluate technology or services. The phrase runs counter to the motivations for its use and doesn’t belong in our vocabulary as a result.

When we invest in the right tools for our workforce, they can do more with more and avoid the negative context that “Doing more with less” implies.

For starters, you don’t do more with less. You do less with less. You do more with more. Productivity is not just a measure of volume, but of efficiency. If the goal truly was to do more with less, organizations would not be looking at solutions like Robotic Process Automation, Case Management platforms, and workflow tools. They would seek to get by the way they always have, by working more hours and adding responsibilities to their team members that distract from their core mission.

If you missed my snow blower fiasco from this winter, it’s a case study in doing MORE with more. By adding a snow blower to my toolkit, I could do multiple driveways in the same amount of time as a shovel. When we invest in the right tools for our workforce, they can do more with more and avoid the negative context that “Doing more with less” implies. You might be trying to be more efficient with fewer people, but something, be it technology or a service, is often what’s needed to make up that difference. For example, a manufacturer based in Missouri increased their AP invoice volume by 230% not by heading any team members, but by adding the right pieces of technology to help the current team do more with more. Work smarter, not harder, right?

If the goal truly was to do more with less, organizations would not be looking at solutions like Robotic Process Automation, Case Management platforms, and workflow tools.

Why does any of this ranting matter? Why get hung up on semantics so much? It all comes down to making sure we connect with our colleagues, clients, and constituents in ways that actually make an impact. We can use all of the market tested buzzwords and phrases we’ve stolen from the training decks and sales pitch materials created over the years. We can try to fit what we really mean into an elevator pitch or 280 characters on Twitter to get all of the SEO possible. None of it matters if we are not speaking directly to the needs of the people we are communicating with, the actual humans at the other end of the conversation.?

Joe Russo is an Intelligent Information Management Account Executive with Konica Minolta, a Hyland Software Platinum Elite Partner and a 2020 Kofax Partner of the Year. Joe has previously contributed to the?The OnBase Blog?and?The Hyland Blog.?His work has also?appeared on?Mic.com,?The Fraternity Advisor, and?Factory of Sadness, a Cleveland sports website operated by Fansided.