Speaking the Language of Money
Most of your salespeople have a head for numbers. They can effortlessly rip through a spreadsheet and pinpoint the dollar value of their commission on a sale. They understand what money represents to their personal bottom line.
Money, in that sense, is defined only in terms of dollar value by what’s earned by them.
But for too many sellers, that understanding doesn’t extend further to the customers they serve. Instead, there I see regularly a chronic deficit of financial acumen. They don’t speak the language of money in a sale in a way that’s understood by others. That’s a big reason why their biggest deals stall and miss hidden opportunities.
I like the way Frederick Kaufman explains this in his recent book, The Money Plot. Stop thinking about money solely in economic terms. Money, he says, is a story. And stories are built from a language that advances a narrative that your audience cares about. The language of money in a sale communicates the values and stakes that matter to your buyer. And that language changes in important ways when a decision about a proposed deal shifts from a mid-level to a senior-level buyer.
As a leader of sellers, you must train your salespeople to get past their habit of seeing money strictly as an economic unit of measure, and instead start talking about it in a language that’s rich in benefits and ROI.
Here’s how you do that.
DEFINE THE STATE OF THE PROBLEM: It’s not enough for your seller to just listen to a customer talk about a unique business problem they have. They are too close to the situation at hand to be objective, or to see that a challenge is connected to other factors they’ve overlooked. That becomes clear when your seller, after listening carefully, confidently takes charge of reframing the problem with questions and then seeks input from the customer. Not the other way around! In doing so, both parties begin to speak the same purposeful language about money relative to the deal at hand.
Recently here at Engage, we coached a client that was working with a data management company. Their customer claimed they needed a solution that would help them make better decisions. We said: “Ask them what’s going wrong right now that makes better decisions so important.” That question later revealed the deeper problem: that there was a government compliance issue, and a potential $3 million dollar fine that needed to be addressed quickly. Equipped with a better understanding of the customer’s problems a better solution was found. And a promising deal turned into a lucrative one.
ASK WHO CARES SO MUCH: Don’t wait on this. Early in the sales cycle, your team must find out who within their customer’s organization is behind the demand for a given solution. Hint: it’s rarely the person you make first contact with. And if your team is dealing with mid-level contacts, the buck never stops with them! Most often the person tasked with finding a solution is not the main beneficiary of the solution. Nor was it their idea to go find that solution in the first place. Find out who cared so much about this, and who is demanding that a solution to be found. Ask directly, “who is driving you to find a solution for this? And why do they care about it?” Recognize also that these beneficiaries speak a different language about money associated with the solution, because the stakes are different for them. To reach them, you must present your solution with tangible value and ROI.
TALK ABOUT STAKES: To master the language of money in a sale, you must coach your sellers on how to speak in both tangible and intangible benefits. For instance, money and time savings derived from a successfully completed deal are tangibles. They’re measurable and verifiable facts. Intangibles, however, touch on what people sense might be true. There, your well-coached seller asks the customer: “What are you risking this quarter by not finding a solution to your problem?” Stakes aren’t just numbers in a spreadsheet: they are feelings in a story. The language of money puts those feelings into words and tells a story that makes sense to your customer. And it puts you and your sales team in the hero role in that narrative. Just as important: the metrics in your story only matter if they are relatable for your customer. Let’s say you’re dealing with a factory-parts business. Ask your customer with decision-making authority: “What does it cost your plant on an hourly basis to have broken-down machinery?” That’s a question with a stake in it that a senior-level decision maker will instantly understand.
Speak the language of money. Start now.
Rethink how you and your team think about money in how it relates to the deals you are negotiating. Stop with the self-limiting belief that money is just numbers with a fixed, inherent worth.
It’s much more than that. The language of money and the conversation it prompts does not end with the customer experience. It starts there.
As you uncover this and implement the actionable steps I’ve outlined, watch your team successfully land and close bigger, better deals.