The Plato Group: Are Your Words Tarnishing Your Credibility?

    MIAMI, FL, February 13, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Credibility is crucial for businesses in order to attract customers and increase loyalty, find The Plato Group. "There are certain things people say that can hurt a company's reputation and credibility without even realizing it," says a spokesperson of The Plato Group. By examining the work of Carmen Fought, Professor of Linguistics at Pitzer College, and Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University and author of the book "Talking From 9 To 5: Women and Men at Work", The Plato Group filter out words that can have a negative impact on a business:

About The Plato Group: http://www.theplatogrp.com/#about-us

Using hedges
According to Tannen, using words such as "sort of", "kind of", "pretty much" or "maybe" indicate that someone does not want to say things outright and can be perceived as being insecure. "It may not be obvious; however using hedges can give the impression of poor decision making due to a lack of confidence, say The Plato Group."

Adding fillers
"It's a little word that we use to buy time or space, and it's really common," says Tannen. Listening to a speech with many fillers such as "ehm", "ah", "like" can be frustrating for the receiver of the message. "And once the listener picks this up, this is all they can focus on," say The Plato Group. This means that the content can easily be overlooked.

Using Intensifiers
Words such as "really", "definitely", "absolutely" or "totally" are used to convince the listener. However, if overused it can weaken someone's credibility, explains Fought. Tannen adds that it can feel like "You seem to be exaggerating; you seem hysterical."

Consistently saying "sorry"
According to Fought, someone who consistently says "sorry" may be questioned about their abilities and skills. "You don't want someone who is overly apologetic for everything that you feel like they are not going to take ownership of their ideas," she says.

The Plato Group say: "After our research, we started paying attention to our words. It is absolutely fine to use those words occasionally to underline a specific fact. If used too often however, they lose their meaning and it can sound rather absurd and may give the impression to other business professionals and customers that you are not a credible firm to work with." The Plato Group therefore recommend business owners to listen carefully within their company and see how the language used has impacted the business.

The Plato Group is an outsourced sales and marketing firm based in Miami, Florida. The firm are market leaders in the industry and have proved to be very credible and reliable to their clients; who would like The Plato Group to represent them in at least three further states by Q4 2015.

The Plato Group specializes in a personalized form of marketing that is designed to generate quality leads and deliver a high ROI for their clients.

For more information Follow @The_Plato_Group on Twitter and 'Like' them on Facebook.

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