Filler Phrases: A Consultant’s Guide to Sounding Clever
Nothing like seeing your own words written down to make you cringe yourself inside out
The best thing about my job is that I get to work with a huge range of industries. People come to my studio with all kinds of projects, no two alike.
The hardest thing about my job is talking to people. When a potential new client calls, I need to simultaneously learn about the project at hand, assess whether I want to work with that person/company, and convince them that they want to work with me.
I’m quite a shy person, and this can get taxing. Some days I have intro calls with six to eight potential clients, all bubbling over with granular details about their fields. While I have a basic list of questions that help me understand what someone needs, I often come up against concepts that I have never considered in my life. Have I ever thought about how to stick foam cheese wedges to the roofs of cars? (no). Am I familiar with safety regulations around hoverboards? (no, but I can find out). Can I build a potato in Solidworks? (yes, but I don’t want to).*
It can be challenging to switch gears from industry to industry, especially without time for research, while still sounding reasonably clever. It’s easy to feel like you need to have an answer to everything, and rattle on and on while getting more tangled up by the minute, or fall into a ghastly silence. Over the years, I’ve developed a set of verbal strategies (which my perspicacious team has pointed out I repeat verbatim on call after call) that keep a client’s attention and confidence while buying time to think, research and assess.
Below are some examples of these slow-down phrases.
- “Does that make sense?” I use this whenever I lose my train of thought. By the time your client has figured out whether you are in fact making sense or not, you’ll be back on track.
- “Any questions thus far”? Another thing to say when you’ve talked yourself into a knot. And of course, you do want to hear any questions!
- “I don’t know, but I can find out!” Admitting that you don’t know something is almost never a problem. Designers are great at finding things out, and there’s nothing wrong with being upfront about that.
- “This is not my specialty but….” Something to say when you think you know something but aren’t quite sure. Studies have shown that the more random facts you know the less confident you are in their veracity. **
- “Every project is different but for similar ones we….” Often I’m asked specific questions about a specific topic I don’t know much about. Talking about even superficially similar projects can get you back on solid ground and better explain your workflow without relying on abstraction.
- “ It varies a lot!” “It depends!” “It’s project dependent!” are all ways to say you don’t know something now but you can and will know it when needed. I have to force myself to say this rather than rushing right into an answer which may not be right.
- “I never put any thought into this before today, but….” is good to lead with if you have what you think is an insightful thing to say but aren’t quite sure.
- “I don’t like to talk about (numbers/money/timeline/etc) on the phone.” I am very open with clients about how much I hate talking about money, and no one ever objects to taking that part of the conversation to email. It’s good practice to get all communication involving concretes like quotes and deadlines in writing anyway.
- “Can you clarify/Can I ask/What do you think?’ Often an unanswerable question can be answered with another question which gets you off the hook while making your client feel important.
- “…………” People love the sound of their own voice. You don’t need to fill pauses yourself, and an air of interested listening can be literally worth a thousand words.
And remember, selling yourself as a designer is the hard part. Once you land the project and get to do the work you’re actually trained for, the fun really begins.
*These are all real things people have asked me.
**Actually I have no idea if this is true or not. I think I read something about it somewhere
