Sales is its own language

Here’s a question for you to start the week: Are you speaking a language that your buyers comprehend?Industry data on falling win rates and low quota achievement suggests not.Sales is a unique form of communication.In fact, if you carefully think about it, Sales is its own distinct language.Its lexicon consists of words and phrases (often scripted.) And, it’s how these words and phrases are strung together that dictate how successfully you can communicate with your buyers.Most sellers know a smattering of the vocabulary of sales. After all, that’s what you’ve been trained in. Here’s your call script. Here’s your discovery script. Here’s your qualification script. Etc. Etc. Etc.One or two days of classroom training and then you’re sent off into the world to navigate on your own.Unfortunately, too many sellers are like tourists to a foreign country who learn a few useful phrases with a language app (or Google Translate) to help them navigate to the nearest public restroom in an emergency.But, in the end, they resort to hand-waving, and increasingly frantic gestures, to make themselves understood.Buyers are on the receiving end of a lot of hand-waving and frantic gestures with sellers. They get the big picture idea. It’s the nuance and complexity that are lost. Those things that make a difference when decisions get made.Here’s the thing. Sales is a foreign language to all of us.Like any second language it takes years of learning and practice to become fluent. It takes a commitment to mastery.It’s not enough to possess a few common vocabulary words of Sales. And then hope that if you speak them loudly enough and with sufficient confidence that they buyer will grasp your meaning.It requires fluency in Sales to carry on in-depth conversations that convey complex concepts. That's how you deliver value to your buyers.If your win rate is not where it needs to be, then you’re not speaking in a language that your buyers fully comprehend.-Andy