Problematic language is expensive (Part 1): The mystery of the disappearing sales prospect
Sometimes I feel like the Sherlock Holmes of workplace bias. I investigate, I gather clues from well-placed informants, and I put together the story of what went wrong.
For many of my clients, what was invisible suddenly becomes visible.
“How did I not see this before?” they’ll ask me.
Usually, it’s because they weren’t looking for the right clues, they didn’t have my investigator’s handbook, or (and this is the most common one), before me, they hadn’t devoted any real resources to the investigation.
Photo © Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Problematic language is expensive.
Most companies have no idea how expensive, and what the hidden costs are. So let me lay out a few of the common ways that not paying attention to inclusive language costs organizations serious money and affects their bottom line.
In this three-part series, I’m going to share with you the most common “leaky buckets” I find in my consulting and in my inclusive language audits. Here, in Part One, we’ll look at sales.
1. The mystery of the disappearing sales prospect
“A time that I didn’t feel respected? Ha! I’ve got a great one,” said Bianca, the high-level tech specialist who I was interviewing.
Her company had hired me to interview a few dozen people who had recently quit, because their head of DEI had run the numbers and discovered that they were losing women (of all races) and people of color (of all genders) at higher rates than anyone else.
And Bianca told the tale of a sales call gone wrong. A late-stage meeting, at the end of a sales cycle that had already taken many months.
A $4 million sales call in which not only did the sales rep talk over her and minimize the expertise she had been asked to bring to the room, but also used a few choice words that caused the CTO to close her notebook, sit back in her chair, cross her arms, and make a face that showed she was done.
“I’m sure that [former company] never got the real reason why that deal fell apart. And they thought it was pretty much a sure thing heading into the meeting.”
Photo © Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
When it comes to sales, ghosting is increasingly common these days. And when the thing that tanked the deal is a sales rep offending decision makers with problematic language? Chances are excellent that the offended prospects aren’t going to bother educating your company about why they decided to shut things down.
Lowering prices or offering more options or services isn’t going to fix things.
This happens at companies with shorter sales cycles too. I’ve got a ton of stories about women who went to a car dealership ready to buy and ended up leaving because of the problematic ways they were spoken to (and often, just ignored).
And of Black customers who came into a store ready to buy luxury goods and left empty-handed because of the racist things said by sales associates.
These are lost sales that companies don’t even know are due to problematic language. So they're not investing on getting their sales teams upleveled on inclusive language in order to plug those leaks.
Not only is problematic language expensive, but the costs are usually hidden. So companies don't know where they should invest to fix things.
Next month, in Part 2, we’ll look at recruiting.
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