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Make Your Expertise Easier for Clients to Use

Clients cannot act on expertise they cannot interpret. Strengthen recommendations by naming the action, object and consequence, defining necessary terms and testing key language outside your specialty.

By WWA Editorial Team 3 min read
Professional revising a client presentation with a colleague beside a whiteboard

A consultant is explaining an abstract process: stakeholder alignment, capability mapping and phased implementation. The client is listening politely but has a more immediate question: What happens next?

The consultant may know exactly what those phrases mean. Yet the recommendation loses practical value if the client cannot identify the next action, who will perform it or what will change. The answer is not to strip out every technical idea. It is to make the path from expertise to action more visible.

Name the action, object and consequence

Concrete language can strengthen the way a service recommendation is received. Research published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that more concrete language in service interactions was associated with greater customer satisfaction, purchase intentions and purchases. Its experiments indicated that concreteness made employees seem more attentive to customer needs.

For a client-facing recommendation, start with three elements: the action, the object of that action and the expected consequence. Instead of writing, “We will facilitate strategic alignment,” try: “We will hold a 60-minute meeting with the sales and operations leads to choose three priorities for the next quarter.” The second version does not promise a result it cannot guarantee. It tells the client what the service includes and what decision the meeting is designed to produce.

Consider an illustrative brand consultancy preparing a messaging project. “We will optimize your brand architecture” may be accurate within the consultancy, but it leaves a client guessing. A more usable version could be: “We will review the names and descriptions of your three service lines, identify overlaps and propose a clearer structure for the website.” The client can now picture the materials involved, the work being done and the output they will receive.

Translate necessary terms once

Precision does not require avoiding every specialist term. Some concepts become less accurate when they are oversimplified. A systematic review in PLOS ONE found varied guidance for plain-language summaries, with active voice and careful handling of jargon among the common recommendations. The review also noted that defining a technical term may be preferable when simplification would mislead.

Introduce a necessary term with a brief working definition, then use it consistently. For example: “Brand architecture—the way a company organizes and names its offers—will guide the website structure.” This preserves the concept while giving the client an immediate reference point. Avoid switching among several labels for the same idea merely to vary the prose.

Audience and context still matter. A PLOS ONE survey experiment found that jargon increased processing difficulty and reduced persuasion for lower-urgency topics, while that effect was absent in an urgent COVID-19 condition. Familiar shorthand can therefore remain useful when everyone in the conversation shares the specialty. The revision question is not “Is this word jargon?” but “Will this audience understand it quickly enough to make the required decision?”

Test the paragraph outside your specialty

Experts may not notice which words require translation. Researchers who validated a jargon-identification method using multiple corpora and 5,000 paired research abstracts and lay summaries found that even lay summaries retained substantial uncommon vocabulary. Familiarity can make specialized language feel more ordinary than it is.

Before sending a proposal, report or presentation, give one important paragraph to someone outside the specialty. Ask them to explain what will happen next, what the client must provide and what output the client will receive. Do not ask only whether the paragraph is “clear.” A reader may say yes while interpreting the process differently from the writer.

Revise with practical questions: Who acts? What exactly do they review, create or decide? When does the client participate? Which term needs a one-sentence definition? What consequence is intended, and is it described without overpromising?

Credibility is not displayed by making clients decode expertise. It grows when accurate advice arrives in language they can understand, evaluate and use.

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