Selling with Simplicity Masterclass: Part 2

Your champion is gonna forget 90% of what you just said to them. It's just human nature. We're drowning in information, and executives especially have the attention span of a goldfish when it comes to vendor messaging. But here's what's interesting: they will remember one thing, but the question is, will it be the right thing?

Let me give you an example of this. I once sold a three-year deal with this single sentence: "Our express lane in the race to become the next-gen go-to card." Now, that sentence probably means nothing to you, but to the CMO of a major credit card company, it said everything she needed to hear. Why? Because it compressed our entire value prop into language that she was already using internally. "Next-gen"—that was not my word, it was theirs. "Race" captured the urgency that she felt. And "Express Lane" was the solution, and it was uniquely ours. That soundbite got repeated in budget meetings, strategy sessions, and executive briefings that I never attended. It became the verbal shorthand for our entire deal.

Quality soundbites always have three characteristics: they're sticky, shareable, and simple.

Sticky means that they fit with the existing stories that our buyers are already telling themselves. We don't remember things just for the sake of remembering them; we remember the things that fit inside of our own personal narratives. Now, that CMO, she saw herself as a legacy builder who wouldn't fade into the rear.

Shareable means that buying teams can repeat your message over and over again, especially when you're not there. One of our users texted me last week: the guy that I had talked to on Friday, I had never spoken to him before, but he showed up reciting lines almost verbatim from our business case that I had drafted months ago. That's the power of a message that travels.

Simple means it taps into our existing mental models. Simplicity isn't dumbing things down; simplicity is complexity resolved. The easiest ideas to understand always fit alongside how people already think about their world.

The challenge is that complex value props get lost in internal conversations. By the time your message passes through three, four, or five people, it's become generic. It's been watered down into some vendor-speak that nobody actually cares about.

So how do you compress your entire sales cycle into something memorable? Well, you use what I call the Four-Sentence Soundbite framework. It's the structure behind every narrative that I write, from business cases to the opening of a demo.

1. Sentence One: Because of [some type of large, unaddressed change in the customer's world].

2. Sentence Two: Now is the time to respond with [a specific approach that you can uniquely enable].

3. Sentence Three: If we do, we'll create [good outcomes that align with the top priority].

4. Sentence Four: If we don't, [bad outcomes are only gonna continue and they're gonna get worse].

Here’s an example: Let's say we're selling analytics software to Spotify. We may say something like:

"Because of audio's shift from à la carte ownership over to bundled streaming credits, now is the time to build discovery-to-book completion funnels so that we can identify those binge-listeners who are most likely to pass the 15-hour audiobook limit. If we do, we're gonna turn 5% to 10% more of our 400 million casual listeners into premium upgrades, avoiding the high cost of paying out additional music royalties versus the more favorable margins that we can earn on audiobook streaming."

Notice how this mirrors the stories that we remember and we can retell. There's some type of change which creates tension, our approach resolves that tension, and good outcomes show the value, while risk creates the contrast.

How to build your own soundbite:

Step one: Write long first. Dump every idea, stat, and customer quote. Put it all out onto a single page and don't filter anything.

Step two: Identify the change. What's different in your buyer's world today that wasn't true yesterday? If you can't name a change, you won't build any urgency.

Step three: Define your approach. What's your way of solving that problem that feels both new and necessary? Something that only you can guide them through.

Step four: Clarify the outcome. Connect back into the metrics that they are already tracking and responsible for delivering.

Step five: Highlight the risk. What happens if they stay put? Not as a fear play, but as contrast to the positive.

Then you can compress it all down. Highlight the filler, the jargon, and the repetitive words; put those in red, and then delete all the red and repeat that over and over again until you have a clean, sharp soundbite.

How do you know if your soundbite works? Ask three questions:

1. Does it open conversations or close them? A good soundbite creates curiosity, not confusion.

2. Can your champion repeat it exactly? If they can't remember it, they can't share it.

3. Would this work in a two-line email forward? That's the ultimate test. Will it travel without you?

Don't guess—actually measure. Run some A/B tests. Put it into your outreach cadences. Your analytics are gonna show you what gets more replies and more engagement. In the mid-funnel, when you hear your champion repeating your soundbite back to you in a meeting, that's when you know you've won.

Remember, your soundbite has to be different and unique for each account. You can't just reuse the same message everywhere. That's why the process always starts with discovery. Listen for their internal language, their project names, and their priorities, and compress your entire value proposition down into their own internal corporate language.

Your goal is not to create the perfect sales pitch. Your goal is to create the perfect internal message that your champion will actually repeat in the meetings that you will never attend. We've created a simple Soundbite Worksheet with all of the testing questions you're gonna need to compress your value prop down into something repeatable and memorable.

If your buyers can't remember and repeat your message, then your deal is already lost. Make it stick. Make it theirs, and watch it travel through their organization even without you.