I'm writing this email at 1.39am my time at my Mum's house after having a few issues getting here to say the least.

I moved away from the North East 30-odd years ago. And to be frank, my knowledge of local geography wasn't all that great even when I lived here.

So I only really know two ways to get to my Mum's. The A189 or the A1.

When I drove here late last night and found that both those roads were closed I was in a bit of a pickle.

Satnav was no help. It just kept trying to send me down closed roads.

And the diversion signs sent me from one closed road to another.

Eventually, I did that thing you do when you're playing adventure games: I tried every route possible and finally found one that got me close enough that the Satnav kicked back in.

Which was lucky as the car was warning me it was running on pretty close to empty.

And since no near-disaster should be allowed to happen without a business lesson being learned from it, here's mine…

The multiple diversions were probably easy to navigate for locals who knew which side roads eventually joined back up to the main ones. But to someone unfamiliar it was pretty much impossible and I had to rely on guesswork.

And very often, when we're trying to explain the benefits of what we do to potential clients the same sort of thing happens.

Because we're “locals” who are deeply involved in our work, it's obvious to us how each little feature results in a big business benefit.

So we often just talk about the features and the stuff we think is clever and assume it's obvious what great results they'll bring.

But to someone who isn't a local like us, it's as clear as my route last night. ie, not clear at all.

Don't assume your potential clients can easily jump from being told about the features of your services to what it means for their bottom line.

Spell it out for them. Do the “mental heavy lifting”.

You've been on this route a hundred times before – they haven't. So guide them.