Episode 98
Welcome to the sales Bluebird podcast, where we believe that is plain wrong. That sales teams of startups don't get the help to succeed. Like sales teams do their bigger and more well-known competitors. If you're a seller or a sales leader at a B2B startup, especially if it's a cybersecurity company you're in the right place today.

[00:00:31] I am your host, Andrew Monaghan, and welcome to episode 98 of the podcast. It's another beautiful blue sky day in Colorado here. I'm recording this at the end of January 2020, and we're still in kickoff season right now. I imagine a lot of you going through that or planning it or about to go through it.

[00:00:55] So I hope those kickoffs are, are worthwhile. Today's topic is about an affliction that happens to mostly frankly, more junior salespeople or those that are learning their craft. Let's say. 

[00:01:10] And that is that when they get sales in their job title, or they end up in a sales team, that they learn a new language, and it's totally against what they've ever learned so far.

[00:01:22] Uh, it's a language no one teaches them. 

[00:01:24] It's a language they just kind of pick up on. They believe that it is the way to talk. And that, of course, the language is called a vendor speak and it's.afflictions are everywhere. It's all over the place. You just have to listen to how we are taught to talk about our products, how we're taught to talk about our industry and, uh, all the different things that come from sources around us kind of puts us in a mode where we believe, or we subconsciously believe perhaps that this is how things should be talked about, and it's not. 

[00:01:59] What I mean by this. 

[00:02:00] Let me give you a real-life extreme example of what someone was showing recently. And I saw this, I think on LinkedIn or, uh, I got sent this, uh, this screenshot of an email that someone received. 

[00:02:15] Let me read this to you. So it started off dear whoever.

[00:02:20] And, I'll blind cat, the company name so that, uh, no one gets too embarrassed, but it starts off like this at company name. We are building the decentralized freemium social metaverse three-dot O that leverages advanced technologies and concepts like NFTs metaverse. I P F S blockchain and AI to provide a complete creator ecosystem to connect and earn together with their supporters, company, name, and brands, while getting a chance to live in a metaphor.

[00:02:59] So that was an email sent to someone and their first reaction was, uh, uh, I've no idea what language that is. Uh, and it's, it's true. I mean, you, you listened to that as you did, as I read it out and who knows what that's all about, right. Who re who, even the person that wrote it, probably can't explain it.

[00:03:17] I bet they're using these words because they couldn't explain it properly in simple language. That seems to me like an extreme example. Right. But it happens a lot. We throw in buzzwords, we throw in industry terminology, acronyms, in, in our world as sellers. Right. We talk about our product name as if someone cares about what we call our product.

[00:03:39] We get this, you know, this part name, version two-dot six. No one cares about that. Right. No one cares that we think it's this synergistic AI equivalent of, you know, sliced bread. Right. It's just, people just don't understand and care about it. When you use buzzwords like that, and you throw all this vendor speak at people, they literally switch off.

[00:03:59] And one of the things that, I learned quickly was that when, when you use those words, you don't sound more intelligent. You sound less intelligent. 

[00:04:07] I'll tell you a quick story. It was about 20 plus years ago. I'm dating myself a little bit, but I've been selling for three or four years.

[00:04:15] And, I was in the office one night and I was working on a presentation. We were giving the next day to a big prospect. It was in the UK. 

[00:04:25] And I was in the room with two really experienced sellers. Well, one was still a seller, but we doing it for 10 plus years and the other one was the VP. And obviously, he'd been selling for a long time and, you know, experienced all sorts of successes and failures along the way.

[00:04:40] And we're working on the presentation halfway through. I remember saying, you know, we need to. Add more words, you need to explain more about, how we're different or whatever. And the two that looked at us like, yeah, we got a slide on that. I said, yeah, but you know, we haven't used some of this terminology, you know, and I forget what it was. 

[00:04:56] It might've been like we haven't called this next generation, uh, a V and we haven't, and they kind of looked at me and he started laughing.

[00:05:03] The VP said, oh, you mean, and he just reeled off, like buzzword off the buzzword and you think we should put that in there? I sat there in silence for two or three seconds. 

[00:05:13] No, when he put it like that, it sounded so stupid. Right. And that was my learning back then that, uh, you know, don't talk like that.

[00:05:22] Right. And I remember him explaining to me that you sound more stupid rather than less stupid when you use those words. So there's no doubt that, uh, you know, we're influenced all around us, by people using vendor speak it. Our companies are very good at it. And I love our marketing folks.

[00:05:38] Yeah. They seem to default more to that sort of language rather than everyday language. So the question is what do we do about it? And I got one simple tip for you. 

[00:05:45] I use this in, in training a lot, actually, I've used this in front of new hires. I've used it in front of people that have. The company I was training with for many years and it works very well.

[00:05:58] And it's really this simple if you're trying to take on a concept and you're trying to think about how to explain something to a prospect, imagine that you're explaining it to an eight-year-old. It really is as simple as that. 

[00:06:09] You imagine an eight-year-old they're smarter than we think they are.

[00:06:12] My kids are a little bit older than that now, but you know, they can take in stuff. I don't need to talk to them and words of one syllable and be patronizing. Right. I can actually explain things logically to them and they tend to get it printed. Um, I think that's true for what we do in sales.

[00:06:26] If we can explain our concepts in simple language that an eight-year-old would understand it, then everyone's going to understand it. And it's not that I think that our prospects need to be treated like eight-year-olds. I think that we need to think about how we communicate and a great lens to use is to say.

[00:06:43] Would an eight-year-old understand what I'm saying here? If I use all these words that I've heard and been told to use would an eight-year-old understand it, or do I need to explain it or use different words that are much more about using everyday life type words? And if I have to do that, then I'm on the right track rather than using these, these buzzwords and big words that we were told to use by someone else.

[00:07:08] I remember one time I, uh, I went through his exercise. I had about 30 people in the room and we were trending away and I, I think it was as simple as, you know, I want you to explain the value prop, right. And of course, Standing up and using all the buzzwords. So then I put my, my kids who were younger at the time on the screen, I said, imagine you're explaining to these guys.

[00:07:29] And at that point in time, uh, one of them, I think he was a SE-type leader. SE leader let's say in the company, walked into the back of the. And I saw him standing there kind of quizzically looking and wondering why these people were talking to a screen that had my kids on it. And then he kind of leaned over to someone else and said, what's going on here?

[00:07:49] And, um, they said, oh, Andrew's having us explain the value proposition as if we were explained to an eight-year-old, and he kind of looked, and he could have walked out. And, uh, I thought, well, that's kind of weird. And then five minutes later, he comes back with a, I think the person was the president of the company.

[00:08:08] Right. And what he basically done is he'd gone and found the president of the company and said, you got to come and see what's going on in the new hire training. I don't think it's. Uh, so he was, he was being very negative about it, right? He said, I think you'd come and see this and tell me, you think this is right.

[00:08:25] This is how we should be training our new hires. And the president of the company comes in. He stands in the back. He watches for a few minutes. He asked someone what's going on. And then he sends they're not in this head. And, uh, he whispers in the ear of the SE leader who co gone to get him and walk.

[00:08:42] And it was only afterward. I find out that that's exactly what happened. The SE leader had gone off. He said, listen, this is not good. This guy's off the rails. He's trying to do things that shouldn't be done. He's treating our prospects like eight-year-olds on sort of stuff. The president have come in and sat there and watch what was going on.

[00:08:59] No, this is exactly what we should be doing. We should be simplifying our messages. We should be careful how we communicate. And I was told through back channels, you know, keep doing what you're doing. This is the right way to do things. 

[00:09:10] The message isn't that we treat our prospects like kids, right. Obviously, they can understand things, but we'll just bamboozle ourselves and confuse them and you lose credibility if we talk in vendor speak. 

[00:09:23] So I highly encourage you as you're thinking about how you describe the solutions that you're selling. You're thinking about how to get concepts across.

[00:09:32] About it very carefully and say, if I explained it like this, would an eighth-year old, understand it. And if not, how can I simplify it and make it more logical and talk about it in such a way that people understand it.