The best way to explain technology

The speed of light has nothing on the speed of technology. Lately, whenever I am having a conversation with someone outside of our industry, most of my time is spent explaining all the acronyms I am using.

I think that most web development companies have a tendency to speak “geek” too much, and with the release of Drupal 8, we are once again moving into a market where we will be explaining technology to most of our clients (and potential clients).

Well, I have a little secret for you. The clients don’t really care. It’s true. They have no idea whether we use PHP or ASP, native JavaScript or libraries, all they want is to have their problems solved by technology. How it works is of no concern to them, nor should it be.

Over the years, we have come up with a trick to help non-industry people understand exactly what it is that we do. Instead of inundating them with endless acronyms, it is always best to relate with them. So, how do we do that? By turning the conversation into an “imagine if” statement.

For instance:

Imagine if your job required you to log into multiple accounts just to get through your day. Wouldn’t it be great if it could all be on one central dashboard? Well, guess what? We can do that.

Or:

Imagine if you were trying to sell stuff through multiple websites and physical stores. But, all of the points of sales systems needed to draw from the same inventory. Keeping everything up to date could be a nightmare. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was one central system that did it for you? Well, we can build that.

By turning the conversation into a story, it is something that they can relate to. Most clients that you will end up dealing with are not going to understand technology, and the problem is only growing. So, instead, we have to talk less about HOW we solve the problems and more about WHY.

Give this technique a shot next time you are talking with a potential client.