What do your customers need to know?

I’m visiting Belgium. In Bruges, we stopped into Jilles Beer and Burgers — look, not every meal can be a gourmet experience — and found this on the last few pages of their little menu booklet.

I’m sure the servers, sick of answering “Are there nuts in the Cheesy Nelson?” and a 300 other permutations, sent up a cheer when the restaurant put this in the menu.

Why doesn’t every restaurant do this? Too pretentious to list your allergens in a chart?

What’s the allergen chart in your business?

What questions are your salespeople wasting their time answering — and probably getting wrong sometimes?

What’s the chart, graph, diagram, price list, or other piece of crucial information that you could condense down into one graphic and sweep the objections away?

What would make your customers say “Ah, now I get it.” in one chart?

Sometimes the race doesn’t go to the best product. Sometimes it goes to the companies that best explain themselves. You don’t have to be Ikea to explain yourself in pictures.

Notice that this allergen chart needs no additional explanation. Could you say the same about your charts?

Think like a customer. And use graphics, because when they work well, they work much better than words.