Google Translate now lets you hear real-time translations in your headphones.
NEWS TO KNOW
The future of AI + hardware is closer than we all think.
Like the $20K robot that’ll clean your house.
Prices will come down, eventually…
📚 – Never Go Into a Late Stage Call Without This Written Out
BEST FROM LAST WEEK
📝 – Lessons From 1st Full Year in Tech Sales
💸 – Booked 4 Meetings in One Day via Cold Email
The Most Valuable Asset in Sales Is Internal Language
I’ve closed seven-figure deals where the turning point wasn’t a better demo or sharper pricing.
It was when I stopped talking like a vendor and started talking like an internal employee.
When your champion presents your solution using the exact phrases their CEO uses in all-hands meetings, something magical happens.
There’s no translation layer. No friction.
It just feels like the obvious next step.
The “Year of Transformation” Deal
I recently closed a massive deal with an enterprise company.
During my research, I found their CEO had declared this “The Year of Transformation” in a quarterly earnings call.
It wasn’t just a throwaway line. He said it three times. Their Head of Digital echoed it on LinkedIn. It showed up in a press release.
So I embedded it everywhere.
My champion’s business case? Titled “Accelerating Our Year of Transformation.”
My ROI slides? Every header connected back to transformation.
Exec presentation? Opened with “You’ve called 2025 the Year of Transformation, and here’s how we directly accelerate that vision.”
The CFO literally said in the final meeting: “This is exactly the kind of initiative we need to make our transformation real.”
We weren’t just another vendor. We became part of their story.
Where to Find This Gold
The best internal language is hiding in plain sight.
You just need to know where to look.
Public sources to mine:
- Earnings calls (the CEO’s exact phrasing around priorities)
- Press releases (how they position themselves externally)
- LinkedIn posts from executives (less filtered, more authentic)
- Job descriptions (tells you what problems they’re actually hiring to solve)
- Company blog posts (especially from leadership)
- Conference presentations or panel appearances
I once found a VP of Sales say in a podcast that their team was “drowning in tools but starving for insights.” That exact phrase became my entire angle.
Guess what language was in their Slack channels when we got internal access?
Questions to Ask Your Champion
If you can’t find this stuff online, pull it directly from your champion.
These questions will unlock the internal dictionary:
- “What’s the phrase your CEO uses most when talking about this year’s priorities?”
- “If I sat in your Monday leadership meeting, what words would I hear repeated over and over?”
- “What do people call this problem internally? Like, is there a nickname or shorthand?”
- “What was the exact language in the exec email that kicked off this initiative?”
- “When your team talks about success this year, how do they describe it?”
- “Are there any internal project names or codenames I should know about?”
The best champions will light up when you ask these questions.
They want you to speak their language because it makes their job of selling you internally way easier.
AI Prompt for Research
Copy this prompt and plug in any earnings call transcript, press release, or executive interview:
Analyze this transcript and identify:
1. Repeated phrases or keywords used more than once by executives (especially CEO, CFO, or business unit leaders)
2. Specific language used to describe company priorities, initiatives, or problems
3. Internal project names, codenames, or initiative titles mentioned
4. Unique terminology or jargon that seems specific to this company
5. Emotional or emphatic language that signals what leadership deeply cares about
Format the output as:
– Key phrase: [exact quote]
– Who said it: [role]
– Context: [what they were discussing]
– Frequency: [how many times it appeared or if it was emphasized]
Paste in the content, run it, and you’ll get a cheat sheet of phrases to weave into your conversations.
How to Actually Use This
Don’t just parrot phrases back awkwardly. That feels robotic. Instead:
In discovery: “I saw your CEO mention [phrase] in the last earnings call. How does that priority show up in your day-to-day work?”
In presentations: Use their language in slide headers, not as quotes but as framing. If they say “operational excellence,” your slide says “Driving Operational Excellence with [Your Solution].”
In business cases: Mirror the exact structure and language of their internal templates (ask your champion for an example). If they call it “Expected Business Value,” don’t call it “ROI.”
In exec meetings: When you summarize the problem, use their exact phrasing. “You mentioned you’re focused on customer-first innovation this year…” immediately gets nods.
The goal isn’t manipulation. It’s translation.
You’re removing the cognitive load of having to mentally convert your vendor-speak into their company-speak.
Why This Works
When your solution is wrapped in their language, it stops feeling like an external thing being forced into the company. It feels like an internal initiative that just happens to have an outside partner.
Executives don’t reject ideas that sound like their ideas.
Champions don’t struggle to sell solutions that already speak the company’s dialect.
Procurement doesn’t push back as hard when the business case reads like it was written by an internal team (because effectively, it was).
Start listening differently. The words that will close your next deal are already out there.
You just need to find them and make them yours.
Win the week!!!
