A few weeks ago, my wife called me at work when my back was up against the wall on a tight copy deadline.

She complained to me that she saw a bunch of big fat flies buzzing around our living room and kitchen.

“So go out and buy some fly traps,” I said testily – annoyed that she would bother me about such a trivial matter.

When I got home, I saw half a dozen small potted plants placed strategically around the living room and kitchen.

“What are these?” I asked her.

“You asked me to buy fly traps,” she said as if speaking to an idiot. “These are Venus fly traps.”

Of course, I had meant for her to go to the supermarket or hardware store and buy fly paper or insecticide or any other kind of paper and chemical fly trap not a plant.

So what does all this have to do with your marketing?

Simply this…The way in which you communicate people permeates your entire business—marketing, sales, support, credit and collection, and customer service.

Now, you may think you are communicating in a clear and unambiguous fashion—just as I did when I told Amy to buy “fly traps”.

But no matter how clear or direct you are, your customer may not understand you for one of 4 reasons.

First, you may not be as articulate as you think you are. Many of us are not.

Second, you may be using jargon your customers are unfamiliar with – or talking about ideas or technology they lack the background to understand.

Third, your customers may in fact be—in certain areas, anyway—slow or impatient learners.

LR, a loyal subscriber to my e-newsletter, has bought and asked for a refund on a number of my e-books.

Why? Because he refuses to learn how to download and use Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Each time, he grumbles: “Why can’t you sell regular books and not e-books?”

(We now offer to print and mail a hard copy for a small extra fee.)

Fourth, no matter how precise and clear you are, some customers are still going to misunderstand you.

Example: one of my customers sent me a nasty e-mail complaining that the quality of the audio CDs I sent him was crappy, because the CDs did not work.

“I put the CDs in every player in my house and car,” he wrote, naming the offending product. “They didn’t play in any of them.”

I called him up and politely said: “Could you remove one of the disks and look at the label?”

“OK,” he said as testily as his e-mail. “So what?”

I then asked him to read the first line of the label, which is printed in big, bold type.

“Dee Vee Dee,” he annunciated slowly.

“Yes, and that’s why it won’t play in your CD player,” I replied politely. “It’s a DVD, not an audio.”

“Oops,” he said sheepishly, “sorry.” And immediately hung up.

My point?

As the marketer, seller, and service provider, it is incumbent upon you to make all your customer communications as clear as crystal.

But no matter how clearly you communicate with people, some are bound to misunderstand you.

When it happens, they may become unjustly irate or rude with you…but even so, treat them with nothing but kindness and patience in return, as you help them solve their problem.

Communication is an integral part of marketing…selling…customer service…credit and collections and virtually every other area of your business.

Follow the advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said (and I am paraphrasing) that it is not enough to communicate so clearly that your customers can understand you.

You must communicate so clearly that your customers cannot possibly misunderstand you (even though some still will anyway).

By the way, the post script to my story about our fly problem is that the Venus fly trap plants Amy bought actually worked!

Flies are attracted to the bright red surface inside the trap; perhaps they think it’s food.

When they land, a sensor on the trap alerts the plant. The trap closes around the fly, imprisoning him. The plant secretes some sort of acid or juice that slowly digests him.

I came home the next night to find my wife trying to pry open one of the traps in which a fly had been caught with a pencil.

“What are you doing?” I asked in amazement.

Turns out she felt sorry for the fly and didn’t want him to suffer.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.