My colleague pointed this out to me earlier and now as the oldest in my office, I am sometimes astounded by some of the terms used by people who want to be seen as credible in a sales environment.
Here are just a few:
“I have to ask my Boss”. Just smacks of someone with no knowledge of how to handle a slightly more challenging situation. How about something like "That all sounds really good. I'd love to share this with some of the team and then we can move forward".
“Very”, “Insanely”, “Extremely”.
If we are taught to remove unnecessary words from emails, then maybe we should do from conversation too. “I’m incredibly eager to get started, but I’m insanely busy this week - could we aim for next week when things will be way calmer?" could easily become "I'm keen to get started but am booked up this week. How about Monday next week?", which puts you in charge with far more credibility.
“I” and “Me”
Reducing your use of the word ‘I’ can actually make you appear more confident. Consider:
"I would be really grateful if you could think about meeting up next week, I'm really keen on your work and I would love to meet up".
or maybe this instead
“Would you be free for a meeting next week? It would be great to learn more about your work and meet up in person.”
So as this old, knackered over wordy person signs off - please, please remember, a bit less can be a lot more credible!
When I started my first job, I was the youngest person in my organization. No, really. Although I could legally drink (barely), every single one of my 300-or-so co-workers was older and more experienced than I was. But looking back, I shouldn’t have let it affect me so much. Here’s what I know now: It doesn’t matter how much experience (or grey hair) you have compared to everyone else. You were hired to do a job and to work together with the people around you. So, the more you can position yourself as an equal, the more you’ll be treated like one.
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