When you describe your services to your prospects, stay away from weak and generic adjectives and adverbs. And don’t use fancy talk to try to sound smarter than you are. Don’t start converstions with suspiciously phony phrases such as “I had a pretty interesting conversation about you earlier today.” It’s weak and generic and your client will sense that he was number 20 on a list of 200. Also, don’t say things like “I work for a pretty interesting company.” Or “I’m calling you about a great opportunity.” Or “I only recruit exceptional candidates.” Or here’s the worst of them all: “we are headhunters who match high performing people with companies who refuse to recruit mediocre staff.” It’s a very weak self-proclamation of your value. Adjectives are weak, especially when you use them to describe yourself. When you speak this way, you sound like a phony and unctuous BS artist.

Instead, open the door with a high performing candidate who can bring specific value and tangible results into the picture. Or find a referral. That way you can structure your opening phrase so that it begins with this: “You and I have a common friend in John Smith and he suggested I give you a call.” Then, you say things such as “We helped John’s company increase their margins by twelve percent through the placement of one of our recent hires. We do executive search and specialize just within your niche, and John told me about some recent changes in your company and thought I might be able to provide similar value. Is this a good time to talk about that?” Forget about building credibility by touting your own opinions of yourself. It used to work twenty years ago. Not in today’s world where buying resistance is at an all time high.

Specificity always builds crediblity. In today’s world, people are busy, don’t have time for silver-tongued snake oil salesmen and can see right through it.