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Well, ‘in the cur­rent eco­nomic cli­mate’ would be one. It’s becom­ing almost impos­si­ble to pick up a news­pa­per or read any mar­ket­ing copy with­out encoun­ter­ing word­ing to this effect – ‘in the cur­rent down­turn’, ‘in these chal­leng­ing times’ etc.

Of course, the rea­son for using them is empa­thy – we get it, we under­stand, we feel your pain. The prob­lem is that cus­tomers don’t really care that much whether you feel their pain or not. They’re far more inter­ested in actu­ally deal­ing with that pain.

No one needs remind­ing of the prob­lems the global econ­omy faces at the moment. So dwelling on it in your mes­sag­ing is at best a waste of pre­cious space and at worst set­ting the cus­tomer on a downer before you even begin.

It is far bet­ter to go straight in to telling them why your prod­uct can solve real prob­lems right now than, in the words of John Cleese, wast­ing time on a ‘state­ment of the bleed­ing obvious’.

And let’s be clear, the real prob­lems to fix for your cus­tomers are not the eco­nomic cli­mate and a global reces­sion (although I’d give you a round of applause if you could). The real prob­lems are that they need more cus­tomers, more prof­itable ways of work­ing and more rev­enue. Sim­ple really.

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