Why this matters
Enterprise deals are rarely won on logic alone. They are won when stakeholders understand, believe, and can advocate for the solution internally. Poor communication creates confusion, misalignment, and friction, even when the underlying value is strong.
Strong communication and storytelling create clarity across complexity. The seller simplifies without oversimplifying, ensuring that each stakeholder understands what matters most to them while maintaining alignment to the overall narrative.
It also enables influence beyond direct interactions. When stakeholders can clearly articulate the value themselves, the seller’s message travels internally, increasing momentum and reducing dependency on direct involvement.
Without this capability, value remains fragmented and difficult to communicate. With it, the seller creates a coherent story that drives alignment, confidence, and decision-making.
What poor and excellent looks like
| Poor communication (The information provider) | Excellent communication (The narrative builder) |
|---|---|
| Information overload: The seller shares excessive detail without clear structure, overwhelming stakeholders. | Structured clarity: The seller organises information into clear, logical narratives that are easy to follow. |
| Single-message delivery: The same message is used for all stakeholders regardless of their priorities. | Audience adaptation: Messaging is tailored to reflect the concerns of finance, operations, and leadership. |
| Feature-heavy explanation: Communication focuses on what the solution does rather than why it matters. | Outcome-led storytelling: The seller links every message to business impact and strategic relevance. |
| Disconnected conversations: Each interaction stands alone without building a consistent narrative. | Narrative continuity: Each conversation reinforces and builds on a clear overarching story. |
| Reactive responses: The seller answers questions but does not guide the conversation. | Conversation leadership: The seller shapes the flow and direction of discussions. |
| Technical language dominance: Communication relies heavily on internal or technical terminology. | Client language fluency: The seller uses language that reflects the client’s world and priorities. |
| Low memorability: Messages are difficult to recall or repeat internally. | High memorability: The seller communicates in concise, repeatable phrases that travel within the organisation. |
| Limited executive relevance: Communication lacks focus on strategic or financial impact. | Executive alignment: Messaging connects clearly to business priorities, risks, and outcomes. |
Top barriers within the sales person
Over-reliance on detail: Sellers equate depth with value, leading to overly detailed explanations that lack structure. Behaviourally, this shows up as long, unstructured responses, excessive use of slides or data, and an inability to prioritise what matters most. While technically accurate, this overwhelms stakeholders and dilutes the core message. For senior leaders, this reduces engagement quickly, as they are looking for clarity and relevance rather than completeness.
Failure to adapt to audience: Sellers use the same language, level of detail, and framing regardless of stakeholder. This creates misalignment, as what resonates with technical teams may feel irrelevant or overly detailed to executives. As a result, messages fail to land effectively, and stakeholders struggle to connect the solution to their specific priorities.
Internal language bias: Using product or company terminology rather than client language. Sellers describe capabilities using internal labels, acronyms, or technical phrasing that make sense internally but not externally. This creates a disconnect, requiring the client to translate the message themselves, which increases friction and reduces clarity.
Lack of narrative structure: Communication is delivered as isolated points rather than a coherent story. Sellers jump between topics, respond in fragments, or present information without clear progression. This makes it difficult for the client to understand how everything connects, reducing their ability to build a clear internal case for change.
Reactive communication style: Sellers respond to questions but do not actively shape the conversation. Behaviourally, this shows up as answering directly without reframing, summarising, or guiding. This limits influence, as the seller follows the client’s agenda rather than leading the discussion toward meaningful outcomes.
Fear of simplification: Concern that simplifying complex ideas may reduce perceived expertise. Sellers may default to technical depth to demonstrate knowledge, even when it is not required. This leads to unnecessary complexity, reducing clarity and making it harder for stakeholders to engage and retain key points.
Inconsistent messaging: Without a clear narrative, messaging may change between interactions, stakeholders, or stages of the deal. This creates confusion and weakens credibility, as the client struggles to form a stable understanding of the value proposition.
Low executive confidence: Discomfort in communicating with senior stakeholders leads to overly cautious, overly detailed, or unfocused messaging. Sellers may avoid direct statements, hedge their language, or fail to connect to strategic priorities, reducing impact and authority in high-level conversations.
Top enablers within the sales person
Structured storytelling: The ability to organise communication into clear, logical narratives with a beginning, middle, and end. Behaviourally, this shows up as framing context, highlighting the core issue, and clearly articulating the implication and solution. This helps stakeholders follow the message and understand its significance.
Audience awareness: Understanding the priorities, concerns, and language of different stakeholders and adapting communication accordingly. The seller shifts emphasis between financial, operational, and strategic dimensions to ensure relevance for each audience.
Client language fluency: Using terminology and framing that reflects the client’s world rather than internal language. This reduces friction, increases relatability, and makes it easier for stakeholders to internalise and repeat the message.
Clarity and simplicity: The discipline to simplify complex ideas without losing meaning. Strong sellers prioritise what matters most, remove unnecessary detail, and communicate in a way that is easy to understand and act upon.
Message consistency: Maintaining a clear and coherent narrative across all interactions. This creates reinforcement over time, helping stakeholders build confidence and alignment around the solution.
Executive framing: Connecting communication to strategic priorities, financial impact, and risk considerations. This ensures relevance at senior levels and increases the likelihood of engagement and sponsorship.
Confidence in delivery: Communicating with clarity, authority, and composure, particularly in high-stakes or senior conversations. This builds trust and positions the seller as credible and capable.
Story reinforcement: Repeating and reinforcing key messages over time in different ways. This ensures that the narrative is understood, retained, and shared internally by stakeholders.
5 micro practices for communication & storytelling
- Structure every message before you speak: Take a moment to organise your point into three parts: context, key message, and impact. This prevents rambling, keeps your communication focused, and ensures that stakeholders understand both the issue and why it matters.
- Adapt your message to each stakeholder: Before meetings, consider who you are speaking to and what matters most to them. Adjust your language, level of detail, and emphasis to reflect their priorities, whether financial, operational, or strategic.
- Translate into client language in real time: As you speak, replace internal terminology with words and concepts familiar to the client. If needed, pause and rephrase to ensure clarity and relevance, particularly when dealing with cross-functional audiences.
- Anchor every point to business impact: Link each key message to outcomes such as cost, revenue, efficiency, or risk. This keeps the conversation grounded in value and ensures relevance for senior stakeholders.
- Reinforce the core narrative consistently: In every interaction, return to your central message and build on it. Use consistent language and framing so that stakeholders can easily understand, remember, and repeat the story internally.
Self reflection questions for communication & storytelling
- If a stakeholder had to summarise my message in one sentence, what would they say, and would it be accurate, clear, and commercially relevant?
- Am I simplifying complexity to create clarity, or adding detail that makes the message harder to understand and act on?
- How does my message change across stakeholders, and is that adaptation intentional and relevant, or inconsistent and confusing?
- Where have I assumed understanding rather than checking whether my message has actually landed and been interpreted correctly?
- Do my conversations build a clear and consistent narrative over time, or do they feel like disconnected updates and explanations?
- Am I leading the conversation toward a clear point of view, or reacting to questions without shaping the overall direction?
- How effectively do I connect what I am saying to business outcomes such as growth, cost, or risk, rather than staying at a feature or activity level?
- Where might I be over-explaining to demonstrate expertise, and how is that affecting clarity and engagement?
- If this message needed to travel internally without me, how easily could it be understood, repeated, and acted upon?
- At the end of my last key interaction, what was clearer, what was decided, and what changed as a result of my communication?