By salespodder in trendwatch —

When To Use Excessive Colour

I've been banging this drum for years, in a book, in training rooms, and now the AI-detection crowd's stumbled into the same territory from the opposite direction.

In short, excessively colourful verbs tend not to be a feature of most writing. So an AI detector will statistically flag such as AI. Even when they're purposely conjured by an author.

So we face danger here of prioritising a statistical tell for such elevated verbs ahead of any rule for what good writing does.

A verb choice that's uncommon does not make it 'bad'.

In the above example "drew" 100 votes carries a different meaning to "got" 100 votes. The former implies a proposal actively pulled support, the latter signifies just possession. So not really mere decoration, but precision.

In my own writing, both in my blog here of over twenty years no less, and in my selling which I've been doing a decade deeper, I deliberately eschew what I consider lazy vocab. Even the other day my final change to a draft post was fixing a "has" to "holds".

It needn't become unreadable floweriness. But for me, killing off 'precise' verbs because a classifier flags them is subjugating your writing to evading a machine rather than for the reader. And said reader is paying our bills.

When 'statistically rare' stays on the right side of pretentious, those bills do indeed get paid.

Not all such colour is lexically equal. One (fine) AI bot served me these three that swamp LinkedIn; unlocked, unpacked, elevated. Which gave me a little shudder, as the first I use lately. Not because I'm blind to the LinkedInanity. But because sometimes a supposedly dodgy word is still the right call. A football pundit phone-in show I listen to asks callers shall they 'lock it in' on their opinion, and that one still lands for me, cliché or not. The rule was never, 'never use it.' The rule is, 'know why you're using it.'

This shows there are generic such verbs. We ought avoid them. A classic trio being the likes of provides, helps and supports.

Take that last offender. The seller saying a product "supports" faster deployment sounds like every other rep. The one who says it "collapses" deployment time is making a claim you can actually argue with, which is uncomfortable, and also the entire point.

Again, care is required. As is said where I grew up, 'nobody likes a smart arse'. Which also reads as, nobody likes someone who sounds like they've swallowed a thesaurus.

I once did an exercise with sellers I managed. Irked reading too many repetitions of 'increase' and 'decrease' in their emails, I made 'em do a mini-test in an internal meeting. 30secs, alternatives, GO!!

I did give them a steer. As in the 90s I was a fan of the McLaughlin Group nightly news chat show. The host always wrapped on whose stock that week the panelist thought might be adjudged to 'rocket' or 'plummet'.

So my take is very much don't get slack and use mistakenly 'safe' verbs. I just don't think they draw buyers towards us. There's a lively nice balance where you don't muddy but instead sharpen your hook.

We are not machines. Clients never bought from Roborep. This is one case where the solution seller that earns the deal does so because they were memorable rather than optimised.