I had a business meeting today with a very smart product guy, working in one of the largest video sites on the web. They want to take @taboola video recommendations to their site, and we’d be happy to work with them. I’ll leave his name out of it to not bridge his privacy. But he is great product professional, and good for his company to have him on board.

We talked about many things. Industry trends, the market, how hard it is to create a really simple powerful product, how to admit what you just absolutely can’t do, and focus on things you do best, and we even talked about relationships.

As part of that — he said something that really caught my attention, and I thought I’ll blurb about it; how it affects people’s life, and even your business ones.

This guy is a very international guy, doing business around the world, as well as making acquaintances everywhere he goes. He told me about a lady he was dating for a while outside of his country. Their main challenge was that they talked different languages. So he knew some words, and can “walk the walk”, but could not be himself. No geeky jokes, no childhood stories, no deep conversations. On paper – how could she really know him. How can anyone really get to know anyone if they can’t grasp what they are saying. Have you ever made a sell without fully being able to articulate what’s the product you’re selling? How it works, features, competitive advantages, history, future roadmap? You couldn’t. it’s really important to be able to do so (right?)

Problem.

Short period into the relationship, same product guy realizes that the lady knows him really well. But how could she? How could that happen if the guy had trouble verbalizing anything.

Could verbal capability be your strength as it is your weakness.

Could it be that better verbalizing capabilities miss out on the real message at times?

Could not being able to over-talk-things win deeper credibility, higher performance, and better messaging? Is keeping it crisp what it is all about?

I like it.

If a guy can date a lady that can barely understand what he is saying, but gets everything around and get to really know him – you may want to keep things really simple, crisp and to the point when selling a product.

Less features, less history. Just the main bullet points. keep them short, one line each, big font, summarizing powerful headline.

Minimal data that covers most of the message. You can even have people at “hello” 🙂