The Challenger Sale

SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF THE BUSINESS
A common, though very tactical, pitfall we see internal business functions
struggle with is their inability to communicate to business partners in terms
they understand. More often than not, this is because folks at the corporate
center are experts in their specific domain area, and while their knowledge

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of their functions—be it legal, IT, or HR—instills confidence in business
partners, it does little to assist these functional experts in communicating
compelling ideas and insights.
One financial services company we work with in our Sales & Service
practice described for us what is an evergreen problem for customer
service: getting the business to take action on customer complaints.
Historically, they had presented complaint data in “call center terms,” that is
to say, in terms of number of calls, total time required to handle complaints,
etc. But they found it difficult to break through with business customers. In
response, they developed a “complaint-to-market impact” model that helped
them calculate, for any customer complaint, what the likely financial impact
would be for the company. Suddenly, business customers were all ears.
According to the VP of customer service, “There are always customer
issues that end up ingrained in the organization. This data—because it’s in
clear terms you can’t ignore—really puts the issues right in your face. It
helps us find systematic issues and convince others that it’s worth
partnering with us to fix them.”
One of the worst offenders when it comes to technical jargon is legal, as
technical a function as exists within the large corporate enterprise. A
member who works with our colleagues in the Legal, Risk & Compliance
practice told us that it’s an area where he spends a fair bit of time and
energy developing his team: “Skills attorneys learn in law school aren’t the
ones that will make them effective in a business setting. As law students,
attorneys learn to write long, technical briefs. These are great for a judge,
but they’re terrible for a businessperson. We spend a lot of time on how you
communicate to your business partners. I even bring in a communications
coach to help them stop saying things like ‘whereas’ and ‘heretofore’ in
their presentations. They’ve got to be able to engage with the business if
they’re going to be successful in an in-house legal setting.”
This particular general counsel goes on to explain that it’s not just
technical jargon that gets in the way of attorneys’ being effective in dealing
with business customers; it’s also their natural predisposition to want to
“call balls and strikes” rather than give the business options that will help
them make decisions: “Attorneys like to give gray answers—this decision
‘might go for you or against you’—but that’s not helpful to our customers.
They can’t make informed decisions with guidance like that.” To help get

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his attorneys out of this mindset, he actually enlists the help of an outside
expert who teaches litigation risk projections. “We don’t have a crystal
ball,” he explains, “but we can give probabilities on decisions and estimates
for potential damages. That’s a lot more helpful to our business partners
than saying a judgment ‘could go either way.’”