I had a former client reach out this morning asking how to politely deal with a business partner who lacks concision when sharing their signature perspectives.

In other words: how to help someone who talks too much get their POV into a more efficient IP format (e.g. a framework, visual, Headshot, etc.)

There are certainly tools available these days to get the process started — probably the easiest is to record a meeting and ask ChatGPT to synthesize it for you.

But I still think there’s no substitute for the more analog first step: writing.

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At the beginning of any client sprint, I send over a pre-sprint worksheet. It’s a 1-2 hour exercise with two distinct purposes:

• To set in motion a deep, guided reflection on the client’s decades of expertise
• To accelerate my onboarding to their domain and unique lens

But there’s one more objective.

The step of writing first, before we jump to visuals or diagrams or even conversation, forces the client to put some structure around things they’ve likely only ever talked about before.

Besides, verbal communication, for all its benefits, gives us far too much leeway.

And with a long verbal leash, concision and clarity often go out the window.

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If you’re finding yourself in client situations where you feel like you speak too much and still fail to be understood, try writing — not thinking through, but actually writing out — comprehensive answers to these simple prompts (just a few pulled directly from my worksheet):

• What problems to clients come to me for?
• What do I see that others don’t?
• What benefits have I seen for clients who follow my solution?

If you can write those out in an organic, non-AI-assisted way, you not only have a mental cheat sheet for your next at-bat, but also some source material to further develop your IP assets.

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💡

-Wes