other posted in other news  on 17 July 2009
by Andrew Lang 
View by Categories | View By Latest

Formal or Informal?

A biased look at what it is to be formal and informal :)

Formal/Orthodox

  • You adopt well-worn phrases when describing your services - a lexicon of commonly understood jargon, and you follow the well worn path of recognised thinking in your industry
  • You find a way to shoehorn a particular phrase into your sentence in a meeting to sound knowledgable
  • You check out your competitors and align yourself to their way of thinking
  • You eschew or even ridicule anything automatically that may appear out of sync or is unorthodox within your market
  • Everything you do requires consensus approval of your company, and must fit your own perception of what's acceptable in your circle of peers
  • Deliver what you promise (no more, no less)
  • Pack up at 5PM every weekday, don't work on the weekend
  • The customer is always right, meet their requests, even if they conflict with the customer's underlying business needs that the customer may not even be aware of, but you are aware of
  • Appearance of professionalism is as important as delivering a professional service.
  • Company mission statement is always about growth in profits no matter what

Informal

  • You speak in plain English in order to communicate clearly (at the risk of appearing less sophisticated)
  • Spend very little time looking at he competition - almost to the point of isolating yourself from them - you focus on customer's business needs
  • Work odd hours including weekends and evenings
  • Can make decisions without consensus
  • "Meetings" are informal, normally on the phone
  • Focused on producing, not presenting
  • You say "I don't know" to some questions
  • You enjoy your work and and enjoy helping others (profits isn't the sole motivation).
It's a bit unfair to list them in this way, but the point is that formality doesn't always equal delivering the best service or product you possibly can, or even being a professional service in the first place. All formality shows is that you understand basic business etiquette, no more, no less. Quite often, people are mistrusting of overly-formal people. You want to know why they're putting up such a veneer, and what's underneath it? When the presentation is slick, but the actual service is poor, the presentation layer is meaningless and quite often a bone of contention with a lot of customers ("they seemed so professional, but they were useless").

Informality can be refreshing when you've previously visited 10 websites, all with cookie-cutter content, all mouthing the "correct" words. You want the product/service, not the orthodox sales pitch that makes product A indistinguishable from products B to Z.

Informality can mean you are absolutely upfront and honest, and speak in plain terms to your audience. You're delivering what they need to know in 5 seconds, rather than force them through a dog and pony show first ("hard sell"). You hook them in with the basic information, and they are led in further by deeper, knowledgeable content on your site (e.g. blog). You're leading them in through their own interests, not your own. You avoid the clichés that hype insists upon. Instead of this, you match up the visitors needs with the benefits of what you're selling - maybe through a case study or anecdote ("soft sell"). Informational searches can often lead to purchases, as purchases are often a result of finding out some new information.

Share this article:


view my profile on Google+