Become an Insider to Prospects
Speak the same language your prospects do
If you’ve ever traveled to a country that doesn’t speak your native tongue you quickly notice two things:
Speaking the textbook version of a language versus speaking local dialect is VERY different.
People can immediately recognize you’re not from the area.
Let’s say that you studied every textbook on the Spanish language. You speak with correct grammar and enunciate every word perfectly. If you used textbook Spanish and visit Mexico, speak with people there, it’d come across as … weird.
You’re immediately labeled an outsider.
Countries have regions with different dialects and certain ways of speaking. There’s a difference in the day to day versus learning from a textbook .
The same applies to sales.
Have you ever noticed how prospects that you speak with refer to business units in different ways? Maybe you sell a product to the R&D team, but they refer to their business unit as “RDCE”. Those same R&D teams may even have projects with different names like “CE alpha” or CE Beta”. I’m making up these up as examples of course.
You can do research in a 10k or annual report. You can learn about each business unit, P&L, and even initiatives that executives have visibility on. But if you don’t refer to the business the same way your prospects do …
You’re immediately labeled an outsider.
By speaking in the same lingo your prospect does, you immediately elevate your status. You communicate you know the business in the same context that your prospect does.
Imagine you’re a busy executive who gets slammed with vendor emails every hour. What would catch your eye:
The email talking about ROI for R&D in xyz projects?
The email discussing how you can solve challenges for CE alpha that RDCE is focused on?
Instead of having to prove what you know, you can get right to the point and provide what you have to offer.
You establish insider status.
By no means is this magic bullet.
However, it can help expedite aspects of the sales cycle. You can get access to an economic buyer or decision maker. Build more traction in a deal cycle with your champion. All of this helps to make the sales process more efficient.
There’s a couple of approaches I’ve been taking to do this. None of it involves using chatGPT or Bard to get to it. Here are some I’ve been using that have gotten me traction in my deal cycles that might be helpful for you.
Listen to calls via Gong or Chorus ai.
Take note of good discovery calls from a customer in the past or recent prospects in a target organization. Review transcripts and tailor outreach using THEIR language combined with your research and value propositions as ways to grab attention.
The added bonus is granting you access to prospects in an org who can provide more valuable information and give you the opportunity to dig deeper into the “why”.
I recently did this exercise with a current opportunity I’m working. The results were access to decision makers in an org to drive more adoption of the platform I’m selling.
Familiarity
I saw this on X:
Credit: TechSalesGuy
Notice the dynamic shift when you talk with people and realize they’re from the same hometown or country as you and it immediately forms a bond?
Ironically, this works for platforms that other customers who have moved to different customers have seen success with. They also understand the value and can translate internally to other teams. Even better if they’ve seen other colleagues get promotions or recognition for successes with that platform. It “de-risks” bringing in your platform as as vendor.
If you’re looking that those types of platforms, I’d recommend UserGems.
The post above is a great way to be able to drive more relevance in getting meetings that are a) probably more qualified and b) most likely to get you an intro to DM/Eb or get next steps on the calendar faster.
You can then use a bottom up approach, trumpeting up, or go direct to DM/EB via your communication or senior leadership.
This happened to me on a call recently. I targeted a key persona who took a meeting because of initiatives I was able to help with, based on my research, that are currently top of mind for the org and familiarity with our product from the past.
Im going to be tracking how this impacts my sales cycles. So far I’m seeing traction.
I’ll keep you all posted on results.
As always, thanks for reading and see you next week.
-Andrew K