Sales Suicide, Vol. 2
Corporate Word Salad
This is the second in a series on the fastest ways to kill a sale before it ever gets started.
Last week we were in a bar getting hit on by Brad, the investment banker with the Princeton degree, the Tesla, and the $340K base who wouldn't stop talking long enough to learn your name. Brad doesn't listen. Brad thinks he's so impressive that the pitch alone will close the deal.
It won't. Not for Brad, and not for your sales team.
Rule #1: Set up your pitch by listening and asking the right questions.
Today we're on to Rule #2. And it starts with a question.
How many times have you read a sales email with the word "organization" in it?
“Here’s how our products can help your organization.” “Does your organization struggle with regulatory compliance?” Sound familiar?
Can you imagine someone saying that in real life?
You're back in the bar. Brad is history. Now you're talking to Brendon. Brendon's actually pretty nice. He asked what you do for a living. You told him you're the CRO of a tech consulting company.
Then Brendon says: "How does your organization obtain access to qualified decision-makers?"
For the second time in a week, you puke in your mouth a little bit and make a beeline for the nearest exit. You really need to find a new bar.
Rule #2: Don't use a word in a sales communication that you wouldn't use in a bar.
When people talk to their peers, they use plain conversational language. For some reason, the moment they try to sell something, they shift into this weird marketing-speak that no human being has ever used in real life.
"Our solutions are super modular. We've got our own gold standard tech stack, but we're also adaptable to the preferences of your team."
It's vomit-inducing.
Why does this happen?
Two reasons, and they come from different places.
Reps often find themselves across the table from a CTO with deep technical chops, or a founder with a PhD from somewhere intimidating. It's easy to feel a little outgunned. So the temptation is to "sound smart." And using big words feels like an obvious way to do that. But it doesn't sound smart. It just sounds weird.
Marketing has a similar problem with a different root cause. Someone's job is to put together a big integrated campaign across email, social, LinkedIn, Google, and banner ads. They're going to present it to their SVP or CMO. They've got real budget behind it. And they don't want it to sound dumb. Plain language feels beneath the occasion. So they start chopping up the word salad. Different motivation, same outcome.
Both paths lead to wasted budget and zero pipeline. Because any email that opens with "your organization," "our solutions," or "common industry hurdles" is hurdling straight into the trash.
So what actually works?
Here's how Antimatter Consulting describes itself: "At Antimatter, we provide solutions to overcome your organization's technology challenges by unlocking innovation, breaking down siloes, and achieving meaningful progress against your enterprise KPIs."
Just kidding. 🤮🤮🤮. See how terrible it is?
We actually start by obsessively deleting every single one of those non-human words. They don’t belong in websites, collateral, emails, ads. They are never good and they must die. Then we think about how real people actually talk. And we rewrite everything on that one simple principle.
There's nothing wrong with something like this:
"My company, CloudServe, works with a lot of startups after a funding round. We help them figure out things like security and reliability as they grow."
Or this:
"I saw you just acquired TechSoft. Congrats! If you need a team to look at all their tools and apps and make some recommendations, we'd love to help."
It sounds almost too simple. Like it can't possibly be enough. Trust me, it is. It's the only way to not get laughed out of the room.
Otherwise you're sitting there like: "We provide your organization with a canonical reference architecture for scalable enterprise innovation."
And they’re like: "Ah… Ma'am, this is a Waffle House."
Do you want to remove all the annoying, unhelpful jargon from your organization? Let's talk.
Next up in Sales Suicide Vol. 3: Selling HIPAA Compliance to a Plumber