Jargon is a good thing. It helps you crunch a complex idea into a word or phrase that you can remember easily. It helps you understand even more complex things - and that’s why different industries develop their own jargon as innovation progresses.

Sales representatives encounter a lot of jargon during their training. That helps them understand, memorise and retrieve concepts - which is a good thing. The problem starts when jargon spills over into real world sales conversations.

For example, banking jargon is widespread. Account statements register money that came into the account as credit, and money that went out as debit. But a credit card or a credit line mean other things - and for those who are not industry insiders, jargon gets confusing. And no one can take credit for that. For a sales representative, eliminating jargon most of the time is necessary, because using jargon intimidates the customer. If the jargon cannot be eliminated, it must be explained.

Here are two examples. When pitching an insurance policy, the agent might pitch ‘riders’. In usual business language, a rider is a condition added to a contract that makes it applicable or inapplicable in certain situations. However, in insurance, a rider is an additional benefit that the policy holder gets, if they pay a little more. For example, a critical illness rider added to a life policy means that the person insured can get some (or all) insurance money if they have a serious illness.

Another example is the limited slip differential (LSD) in off-roader automobiles. Many automakers have different brand names for it and present it as a desirable feature. Although it is a complex engineering term, the benefit can be explained in simple terms to the customer. In a vehicle with LSD, if one wheel of the vehicle is on a slippery surface like mud, the other wheel will still be able to power the vehicle forward, rather than causing the vehicle to slip or get stuck.

A sales representative who explains the terms comes across as someone who shows empathy - and that’s a secret superpower that many sellers don’t master. Someone who does not do that, or just hands out an explanatory flyer will be seen as uncaring and transactional. Worse, the representative can make the client look less intelligent and unaware - which only serves to make them hostile. However, it is not enough to explain the terms, but also demonstrate the benefit of the product being sold. Taking the above example, the representative can tell the customer that the rider they are buying adds a lot of insurance cover with minimal expense. Or that the LSD is a useful feature to have if the customer is planning an offroader vehicle. This makes the customer feel that their money is not being wasted on bells and whistles.

In a rush to meet sales targets, it can be natural that a representative fails to demonstrate empathy or explain jargon properly. This only results in a low success rate and high customer resistance. However, one must also be wary of over-explaining to the customer, or coming across as patronizing. Understanding the customer’s awareness level is critical. One way to see it is to put oneself in the customer’s shoes - and see the product from their perspective. Do they come across as pushy sellers, or as advisors helping the buyer make an informed choice?

The goal of sales enablement is to identify the loopholes, where the sales representative is being transactional, and where they are being empathetic. AI-based roleplays, video playbacks of real conversations and FAQs can help train representatives to elevate their sales game with every conversation.

sharpsell equips sales reps with personalized content to engage with customers and customized presentations to share with customers as per their needs. All the content is accessible through a single source - the sharpsell platform. Companies using sharpsell have seen an increase in sales productivity with higher number of products sold, higher ticket size, increased visibility on prospecting, reduced content creation cost, reduced time to first sale, reduced costs of training, and uncovering insights on product feedback.