In my previous post I shared that you need to “Be Ruthless Choosing your Words.” The following video I feel captures that in a very poignant way. Far better than I could. It’s an oldie but a goodie.

A picture is worth a 1,000 words. 10 words is worth 10 words. Choose them wisely.

Here’s an example of a slide I was given as part of our Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions for Endeca (affectionately known as EEE or E^3 by myself) product collateral.

There’s a lot of good things about this particular slide. This is certainly not the worst slide I’ve seen. That being said, I think we can do better. Let’s take even this seemingly compelling slide and propel it to the next level. Ok, so let’s roll!

There are a lot of words on that slide. 23 to be exact, including the irrelevant title. Naturally, the meaningless title was the first to go. Now onto the meat of the slide. Copywriting should force you to be concise. Be a ruthless editor of your material. Practice with Twitter. Sentences need emotion, passion, feeling and fire! So let’s take this slide and go through the process of putting it through the fire and get the gold of the message to be unmissable!

“I spend a quarter of my day gathering the pieces of information that I need to do my work.”

When I approach this task of distilling the message into a short attention grabbing sentence I begin with simply re-writing the sentence. I don’t necessarily focus on reducing the words. Just phrasing it differently. Sometimes the way a message is original phrased can inhibit your ability to distill the message.

“I spend a quarter of my day searching for information in order to do my work.”

I did here manage to cut down some of the words. We are now down to 16 words. 3 words cut out. We still have a way to go. My next version:

“Half my morning searching for information to do my job!”

10 words. Progress. With this particular version I felt that not only was the sentence shorter it actually had much more impact. The message at this point is still highly factual. Apart from the exclamation mark there is little to indicate whether this is bad or good. It might be a huge success. Maybe previously it was 1 week searching for information to do my job. It’s still vague. It lacks guts. We can still reduce the number of words father. There is too much information in this sentence.

“Half my morning wasted!… Again!”

Rather than being purely factual it now was more emotional. You can feel the pain in the words. Not only does the word waster bring in a sense of fruitlessness in the search, but also the frustration that this is an on-going pain. Again! It invokes feelings of being a mouse stuck on a mouse wheel. Here I am again doing busy work. Not adding value. Just fighting the constant uphill battle, draining my energy, and my enthusiasm to amplify the business.

Here’s the final slide I came up with. It probably could still be improved upon. In my view this is a journey. All my slides in all my decks are drafts. They are never done. There are consistently chances for improvement.

Can you distill this message even further? How would you capture the pain and frustration experienced by this user?

If there’s one thing I am more passionate about than Oracle software, it is being clear in how I convey why Oracle is the best choice. Let me be VERY clear. I only will position Oracle when I truly believe it is the best choice. To do otherwise is suicide. Sadly what I see in most presentations is that we are clearly unclear in how we convey value from Oracle software. Most presentations I’ve seen in the corporate world have me reaching for the barf bag that I strategically grab from all my United flights. I’ve been tempted to get a bunch made with an Oracle logo on it to hand out before some of our presentations.

To not change is to say I don’t care about legacy. I don’t care about the future. Oracle can die the death of a thousand papercuts.

This is most obviously shown in the difference between Apple and Microsoft.

Don’t get me wrong. The content is often amazing. It’s life changing (for the better) in most cases for our advocates (customers) and future advocates (prospects). We put a lot of effort into the material. Every solution consultant is passionate about bringing value to help amplify the business. I find it heart wrenching where we take that material and then make it clear as mud. How is this the case? Bullets, bullets, and more bullets, and yes the occasional #meaninglessphoto that is an attempt at something limbic and engaging for the right side of your brain. The effect is after 10-15 minutes everyone (myself included) is struggling to pay attention and learn this life altering information that I really do need to know.

Quite frankly it’s a massive disservice to everyone involved. A good idea is fragile. Whether it will grow, blossom and gain momentum really depends on those early stages. How you get people on board with your idea is critical. Too much too soon and you will kill it. People need to understand the why and frantically pursue that idea with tenacity and passion.

So why is this so hard? Why do we resort to self-destruct mode putting out the same material we have seen for the past 30 years? Why?! Sweat and tears. It’s nothing short of hard work. At times it’s frustrating, difficult, and is a constant battle up hill. Change very seldom comes easily. The greatest ideas have always met a fair degree of opposition. People focus on the immediate pain, and not the long term view, the why behind what we do.

This is where I find myself, meeting the friction of seeing we need to change. It’s not an option. To not change is to say I don’t care about legacy. I don’t care about the future. Oracle can die a death of a thousand paper cuts. Remember, guns don’t kill people. Bullets do.