I’ve always said that much of my inspiration for these articles comes from my clients, and this one is an example. A client said something to me last week that grabbed my attention: “Confused customers don’t buy.”
He was explaining why some salespeople in his industry are losing business. Salespeople do a great presentation – feature-rich, technically thorough, professionally delivered. The prospects nod through the whole thing, ask a few questions, and then say they need time to think it over. Three weeks later, they buy from a competitor.
The salespeople can’t figure out why this happens, but here’s the real reason: “The other company made it clearer what we were actually getting.” Many deals aren’t lost on price. They aren’t lost on features. Not lost on relationship.
They’re lost on clarity.
Your Jargon is Your Enemy
I see it all the time. Salespeople live in their products every day. They know the terminology, the acronyms, the technical specifications. They talk to colleagues who speak the same language. They read industry publications that use the same shorthand.
And then they walk into a sales call and forget that their customer doesn’t live in that world. API integration. SaaS deployment. ROI modeling. Multi-tenant architecture. Agile methodology. Whatever the jargon is in your industry, you know it cold. Your customer might not. Worse, they might think they know it – nod along because they don’t want to appear uninformed – and then walk away with a completely incorrect understanding of what you’re proposing.
I watched this happen on a call recently. The salesperson was selling manufacturing software and kept talking about “MES integration” and “real-time data visibility at the cell level.” The prospect – a plant manager who’d been in manufacturing for twenty years – was nodding along. After the call, I had a moment alone with the plant manager, and I asked him what he thought. “I think it sounds good,” he said, “but I’m honestly not sure what half of that means for my operation.”
You might be thinking that I could step in and save the deal at this point – grab the salesperson, pull him back in, give a quick whispered instruction, and re-set the call. Nope. We’d been there for an hour and that’s all the time we were allotted. And the truth of it is that, part of the time, I didn’t know what the hell the salesperson was talking about either! The salesperson thought he’d nailed the presentation. The customer was confused. And confused customers don’t buy.
Are You Talking to a Decision Maker, or an Implementer?
The situation gets worse when the decision maker and the implementer are two different people – and never mistake, they often are. Your IT contact understands “cloud-native microservices architecture” and “containerized deployment.” Great. Talk to them in those terms during discovery.
But when you’re presenting to the CFO who controls the budget, that CFO doesn’t care about microservices. They care about whether this investment will reduce operating costs, improve efficiency, or enable growth. And you’d better know and understand those big-picture advantages as well as you do your jargon.
Too many salespeople present to decision makers the same way they talk to implementers – focusing on technical terminology when they should be focusing on big-picture business advantages. The CFO doesn’t need to understand how the technology works. They need to understand what it does for the business.
“This solution provides real-time visibility into production metrics through our cloud-based MES platform” means nothing to them.
“You’ll know within two hours instead of two days when a production line is running behind schedule, which means you can make decisions that prevent late deliveries to customers” – that they understand.
You see, you’re talking about the same capability in a different language. One creates clarity. The other creates confusion.
Yep, I’ll Say it Again For Those in the Back – Comfortable Customers Buy
I’ve written before about my mantra: comfortable customers buy.
A comfortable customer is one who understands what they’re buying, trusts that it will solve their problem, and feels confident making the decision. Comfort and confusion are opposites. You cannot have both.
When a customer is confused about what you’re proposing – whether it’s because of technical jargon, unclear explanations, or a mismatch between what they care about and what you’re emphasizing – they become uncomfortable. If they’re pretending to comprehend what you’re saying because they don’t want to look dumb, they get even less comfortable. And they can’t wait to get you out of the office, because you’re making them feel dumb.
Uncomfortable customers don’t buy. Or they delay. Or they buy from someone who made them feel more comfortable, even if that competitor’s solution is objectively inferior to yours. Your job is to create comfort through clarity.
How to Create Clarity
Translate, don’t educate. Your job isn’t to teach customers your industry’s terminology. Your job is to translate what you do into terms that match what they care about. If you find yourself using an acronym or technical term, stop and ask yourself: “Would my customer’s CEO understand this?” If not, rephrase it.
Match language to audience. When talking to implementers, use the technical language they expect. When talking to decision makers, use business language. “Reduced latency” for the IT team becomes “faster response times for customers” for the executive. Same thing. Different audience. Different language.
Check for understanding. Don’t assume nodding means comprehension. Periodically check: “Does that make sense in the context of how you’re operating today?” or “How would you explain this to your team?” These questions surface confusion before it kills the deal. I used to say that “nodding along is a buying sign.” Now, I’m not so sure. When in doubt – ask checking questions.
Use analogies and examples. Abstract concepts become clear when you ground them in familiar terms. “Think of it like…” is one of the most powerful phrases in selling. I watched a salesperson explain cloud storage to a non-technical buyer by comparing it to a safety deposit box – you don’t keep it in your building, but you can access it whenever you need it, and it’s more secure than keeping it on-site. The buyer got it immediately.
Focus on outcomes and advantages, not features. Technical features create confusion. Business outcomes create clarity. “Machine learning algorithms” confuses. “The system gets smarter over time and makes better recommendations the longer you use it” clarifies.
How to Test Your Clarity
Here’s a simple test for your next presentation: Could your customer explain what you’re proposing to someone else in their organization? If they can’t, you haven’t created clarity. And if you haven’t created clarity, you haven’t created comfort.
Confused customers don’t buy. They stall. They delay. They ask for more information. They shop your proposal to competitors hoping someone will make it clearer. Or they just go with the vendor who made the decision feel less risky – even if that vendor isn’t offering the best solution. Ever lost a sale that way? I have. It sucks.
Your technical knowledge is valuable. Your industry expertise matters. Your product’s capabilities are important. But none of that creates value for the customer if they don’t understand it.
Be Clear.
Stop assuming your customers speak your language. They don’t. And expecting them to learn it is arrogant and ineffective. Translate technical terms into business outcomes. Match your language to your audience. Check for understanding. Use analogies and examples.
Make clarity your competitive advantage. Because at the end of the day, confused customers don’t buy. Comfortable customers do. And the fastest way to create comfort is to create clarity.
