A Few Words

I've written before about my time in retail.

I started in the back, receiving stock, and it wasn't long before I was on the sales floor full time.

What I didn't spend much time on was the part I actually enjoyed.

It wasn't the selling.

It was the people.

The store was in a tourist area, so customers came through the door from all over the world.

I made it a point to learn a few words in every language I came across.

Just enough to greet the next person from that country in a way they weren't expecting.

I learned them because I liked talking to people.

Think about what that moment is like from the other side of the counter.

You're a long way from home. Everything around you is in somebody else's language. You're tired, you're shopping, and you're doing the math on the exchange rate in your head.

Then a stranger says hello in yours.

The accent may be off.

The grammar may be worse.

It doesn't matter.

Somebody made the effort to meet you where you are.

That's the part people remember.

Most of us do the opposite when we start marketing something.

We sign up for the offer, read the sales page, and start talking the way the company talks.

Features.

Bonuses.

Words nobody has ever said out loud at a kitchen table.

Then we wonder why nobody stops to listen.

The people you're trying to reach already have a language.

It's the words they use when they complain to a friend. The way they describe the problem when it's keeping them up at night. The question they type into a search bar when nobody's looking.

That's the language that gets someone to stop scrolling.

You won't find it on a sales page.

You find it by listening.

Read the comments under other people's posts. Read the questions people ask in groups. Pay attention to how they describe the problem, not how you'd describe the solution.

Then say it back to them the way they said it.

It will feel too simple.

It's supposed to.

On the sales floor, nobody cared how many languages I knew.

They cared that I'd bothered to learn a few words of theirs.

You don't need to be fluent.

You just need a few of their words.