Language & Sales

" if you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch" Rudyard Kipling

There was a recent article from the Harvard business review on 7 reasons people can't close sales [ read here ]

The one that intrigued me the most was number 2, because I have seen this happen time and time again. Whether through fear or lack of training, it is sad to see.

A person selling a product or service has the skills to get through the layers of decision makers and build relationships. Then comes the final hurdle, a face to face with the ultimate decision maker.

Everything that has gone before is null and void. Here you must be able to speak their language. You can talk benefits, pain of loss or fear of missing out. But it can fall on deaf ears, because the language used is foreign to the decision maker. A language they don't understand or speak. And the sale is dead in the water. Because when you reach the C-suite, being able to communicate in their language is what will set you apart from the crowd.

It is a foreign land. To survive there, you must learn to speak their language. Failure to do so, will leave you scrabbling along the bottom rung with many others.

Here are three ideas that will assist you speak the language of the C-suite,

1.
Buy and read the weekend edition of the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal.

2.
Watch CNBC or Bloomberg and listen for the words and phrases used, when they interview people from the C-suite .

3.
Read good biographies of these people. Where they came from and how they achieved their goals.

Know your customer, know their language, know and understand their world. Next time you are invited into the C-suite, come prepared. The outcome will be different.

Colin Myles Author

P.S.
" Life is all about selling. Being able to exchange knowledge and move people to co-operate. "
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