7 Words You Should Avoid Using In Your Sales Pitch

1. Exciting

There is no word more boring than the word "exciting." Claiming that something is "exciting" tells everybody that it's not.

2. Innovative

Same here. I can't remember ever hearing Apple claim to be innovative; they just are. They don't have to point it out.

3. Honestly

When this word comes out of your mouth, it makes everything else you've said so far seem like you were probably lying.

4. Discount

Let's leave this tired old term back in the world where "But, wait! There's more!" is state-of-the-art sales patter. Look, your stuff has a price and maybe you've got some flexibility. But offering a "discount"? How cheesy.

5. Guarantee

Everyone in the world who has an ounce of sense knows that a "guarantee" means absolutely nothing.

6. Opportunity

Calling any sales situation an "opportunity" is telling the customer that you're all about closing the deal. Just like any other opportunist.

7. Collaborate

How did this dreadful word get into the business vocabulary, anyway? Yes, you've got to work together with people to get stuff done, but "collaborate"? Hey, that's what the Vichy France did with the Nazis.

Matt Cuts on Advertorials

Google's disinformation agent Matt Cutts on advertorials:

What's a niche? 10 Definitions

• Seth Godin:

"if it's not mass, if it's just for some, not all, it's a niche."

• Jeremy Jones:

"a niche is a specific target marketed topic you can become known for"

• Content Marketing Institute:

"a niche needs to be small enough that there is the possibility to position you or your company as the leading expert in the world at that niche. Most companies go too broad with their niche (hence, not a good niche to pick). When you try to create content for everyone, you often end up being of little value to anyone."

• John Blue is the Chief of Community Creation at Truffle Media:

"Niche for our needs are well defined groups of people interested in a similar issues or topic. For example pork producers who have more than 30,000 pigs is a very defined group of people. Niche does not necessarily mean small numbers of people. You can have a well defined group and have hundreds of thousands of people. Examples would include people interested in _just_ IU basketball, people interested in ice fishing, or people interested in cattle rodeos."

• HeidiCohen, President of Riverside Marketing StrategiesHeidiCohen.com:

"A niche is a well-defined segment of a larger market. The more specific you are in delineating your niche audience; the easier it is to target your marketing. A niche market provides an organization with the opportunity to uniquely fulfill the needs of its members based on their interests, past behavior, social media preferences and role in the purchase process. When defining your target market, it's useful to create a marketing persona as well as a social media persona to better understand your audience and the tradeoffs they're willing to make."

• Eric Spellmann, founder of EricSpellmann.com:

"I define a niche as simply "a specialized area of interest." On the Internet, at least with my customers, I have discovered that the businesses that have a more targeted, laser-focused niche do better than those with a vague, Wal-Mart-like goal. While a niche product has a smaller potential customer base, it also has fewer competitors to rise above."

• Jim Cockrum:

"From an online marketers perspective (my perspective specifically) a "niche" is a topic, item or concept that has the potential to be an online rallying point for those with similar interests and needs related to the given topic, item or concept. The true opportunity in niche marketing is for the leaders, mavericks, and trend setters in those niche markets. Done well, you can become a trusted source of information and leadership on virtually any topic, item or concept as long as there are others online with similar interests or curiosities."

• Shawn Collins, AffiliateSummit.com:

"Niche is simply synonymous with a vertical or topic."

• Bob Speyer, co-founder of WebSuccessTeam.com:

"A niche is a defined marketplace and targets a select segment of a larger group. In the social media sphere, a niche is a group of people that share common interests, hobbies or professional associations. Often times these special groups incorporate community guidelines. Brands can utilize niches to drill down and target consumers in less congested environments other than Facebook and Twitter, like Instagram, Pinterest and Foodspotting."

• Chris Brown, Founder of Resources-Results.com and Branding & Marketing:

"A niche is defined as a narrow target market. I think the word niche means small and focused. A niche can be described by a variety of demographic, psychographic and geographic qualifiers. While some people might define your niche by the products or services you are selling, to me It is more about who you are selling to rather than what you are selling. A very broad niche might include a whole industry: Computer users. Automobile drivers. Architects. A narrower niche might be: First time mothers of twins with household income of over $70K."

Keep pushing, pushing, pushing...

The biggest mistake innovators make is to think all they have to do is to introduce a new idea or system, and then everyone will embrace it. No way. To change a system, you have to keep intervening.

Read more about what innovators do when others fear change.

Learn to let go...

It can be difficult for an entrepreneur to move away from the old adage, "If I want something done right, I should just do it myself." But great leaders ensure that their employees have the opportunity to learn and operate independently. Loosening the reins not only fosters growth in your team, it frees you up for higher-level tasks.

Don't make your customers jump through hoops

Potential customers aren't going to jump through hoops just to interact with your brand. Remove barriers to entry, like forcing users to log into Facebook to access your promotion. The more steps potential customers have to go through in order to participate in your promotion, the less likely they will be to enter.

A free utility to make sharing files easier

Email was originally never meant to be used to transfer files. As files get bigger and different companies use different tools and techniques to filter incoming emails, this is becoming more and more painfully clear. Some servers won't accept emails with "big" attachments (whatever "big" may be), others will strip certain files (such as zip files) from emails,... There really is no way for the sender to know that the email he sent reached the recipient with all the files he attached still there.

A solution is to include a link to the files instead of attaching it to the email. FTPUploader is a small and free utility for Windows that enables you to upload files with a simple right-click.

It's very easy to use: locate the file, right-click and select FTPUploader. The file will be uploaded to your server and the url for the uploaded file will be copied to your clipboard, ready for you to paste in your email message (or blog post).