It can be a common pitfall for business owners that are passionate about their business, product or service to talk a lot of ‘tech speak' when working with their prospects. "The such and such does this at this speed and this many times a second because of this, this and this". Or, they will use terminology that is not understood by the average prospect. What's even more of a concern is that the majority of the sales people don't even know when they are doing it.

Although you may consider that the information that you are providing is important, it is vital that you are speaking the same language as your prospect. The following five points are simple, yet effective ways to bridge the communication gap between you and your prospects.

1. Be Engaged with the prospect: Build a relatedness to the prospect, ask good quality qualifying questions that give you a firm understanding of where the prospect is at with the knowledge of your product and also their buying motives.

2. Use common terms: Avoid using technical terms that may not be understood by the average prospect. This doesn't mean you have to lessen the impact or ability of your product or service. Remember, most prospects are to concern with what the products technical specifications are, rather, what is it that it can do for them.

3. Use examples: Using real life examples or analogies will help provide the prospect with a context for your product or service. This will allow them to visualise its practical application.

4. Match the prospect: With out going into too much detail about personality profiling, you want to speak in a manner that is a match to your customer's personality. For example, if they are speaking at a fast pace, increase the pace of your speaking. If they are talking numbers and details, talk numbers and details. The only way to truly be effective at this is to follow step one, above.

5. Check in with the customer: An easy way to know if a prospect is understanding what you are saying is by asking them. Simple questions such as, "how do you see this could be of value to you?" Or, "what are you seeing/ hearing for yourself?" Even, "does that make sense?"

Failure to speak the same language will create a gap between you and the prospect, they may be left feeling invalidated, inadequate and sometimes unworthy or underqualified for your product or service. If this is the case, the most common result is that they will then become resentful of you, your product and your business.
Ultimately, they will not buy from you.


Article by Simon Bell