Speak Their Language

Have you ever heard of a babel fish? If not, bear with me and I’ll give you a quick explanation.

A babel fish is a small, yellow, leech like creature that feeds off brain waves and converts them into sound waves. If you put a babel fish into your ear, it has the effect of translating everything that you hear into a language that you understand, regardless of who is speaking to you.

Of course the babel fish isn’t real. It is the invention of the science fiction writer Douglas Adams in his series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He created the babel fish to overcome the problem that all sci-fi writers face: “How can we get aliens to speak English?”

In sales, we have a similar problem. Too many people fail to speak the customer's language and think that by reciting an impressive list of product features they will win the customer over. In most cases, this technical jargon is a foreign language to the customer and they tune out.

Whenever you are trying to sell something or influence someone, you need to be like a babel fish and speak their language. Salespeople that can translate product features into customer benefits are able to shift the customers mindset away from price and onto value. 

If all a customer hears are features, they will feel like they are being sold to. If the salesperson can translate the features into the benefits that the customer will receive, the customer will feel like buying.

You may think this is Sales 101 (which it is), but let me ask you: “How well does your company speak the customer’s language?”

Mark Windust is an influential Thought Leader in the areas of Sales, Strategy and Leadership. Since launching his consulting practice in 2007, Mark has worked with 1000's of business leaders, salespeople and entrepreneurs’ to help them transform their sales results.