Skills · 3 min read

How to Learn Your Buyer's Language From Public Sources.

No call recordings to listen to? You can still learn your buyer's language. Reviews, job ads and earnings calls are full of the exact words your market uses.

Will Koning

Founder, meritt

To learn your buyer's language from public sources, read what they have already written down. Software review sites, their own job ads, and their earnings or investor updates are full of the exact words your market uses. Pull twenty minutes of that and you will sound like an insider on your very next call.

Why bother with public sources?

Most advice says listen to recorded calls. That is great advice, if you have recordings. Plenty of people do not. You might be new. You might be opening a market nobody on your team has sold into. You might be a candidate with no calls of your own yet.

Public sources fix that. Buyers write about their problems in public all the time. They just do not label it "here is my sales pitch homework." Your job is to know where to look.

The three places worth reading

Software review sites are the loudest. People write reviews when they are annoyed or delighted, so you get the raw words, not the polished ones. Read the two-star and three-star reviews first. That is where the real problems live.

Job ads are the quietest and the most useful. When a company writes a job ad, it lists the exact things it cannot do today. That is a problem list with a budget attached.

Earnings calls and investor updates only work for bigger, listed companies, but they tell you what the top of the house is worried about this year. If your buyer's boss's boss keeps saying one word, use that word.

How to do it

Read ten reviews and copy the complaints word for word

Open a review site and find products your buyers use. Skip the five-star raves. Read ten mid-rating reviews and copy the phrases people use for what annoys them. Do not tidy the wording up, that is the point.

Three reviewers all said "it takes forever to onboard a new rep." That is the sentence I use, not "lengthy ramp periods."

Read the company's own job ads

Look up the job ads your target company is running right now. Every ad is a list of things they cannot do today. The words they use for the role and the goal are the words they use internally.

meritt is hiring two SDRs and the ad says "help us build a repeatable outbound motion." So I open on repeatable outbound, not on software.

Skim one earnings call or investor update

If your buyer works at a listed company, find the latest earnings call summary. Note the two or three phrases the leadership team keeps repeating. Those are the priorities everyone below them is being measured on.

Their CEO said "efficient growth" four times. Now I frame my question around doing more without adding headcount.

Turn it into one page you can scan before a call

Ten quotes is not a plan. Group what you found into three or four repeated worries, and write the buyer's own phrase next to each one. That one page is what you read in the two minutes before you dial.

Worry: new reps take too long. Their words: "takes forever to onboard." My opener uses their words, not mine.

See the difference

Weak

I read the company's homepage and used their marketing words. "I see you're focused on innovation and customer-centricity." Every company says that, so it tells the buyer nothing and it tells them you did no real work.

Strong

I read three reviews of the tool they use and their two open job ads. "You're hiring two SDRs and the ad mentions building a repeatable outbound motion. Most people I speak to at that stage say new reps take forever to get going. Is that where you are?"

The weak version quotes their marketing back at them. The strong version quotes their own problems back at them. Only one of those sounds like an insider.

How you'll know it's working

You have got this when you can walk into a cold market and still sound like you know it. Try this test before your next call: can you name three worries this buyer has, in their own words, and say where you found each one? If yes, you are there. Reading beats guessing, and it is the one bit of homework nobody can stop you doing.

Questions people ask

How can I learn my buyer's language without call recordings?

Use public sources. Read mid-rating reviews of the tools your buyers use, read the job ads your target company is running, and skim an earnings call or investor update if the company is listed. Each one is written in your buyer's own words. Copy the phrases exactly and group them into three or four repeated worries you can scan before a call.

Why are job ads useful for sales research?

A job ad is a list of things a company cannot do today, written by the person who feels the gap most. It names the goal, the team, and often the problem behind the hire. It also tells you they have budget, because they are paying someone to fix it. Reading two live job ads usually tells you more than the whole homepage.

Which product reviews should I read first?

Start with two and three-star reviews, not five-star ones. Happy reviews are short and vague. Middling reviews explain exactly what went wrong, in unfiltered language, which is what you want. Read about ten of them for a tool your buyers already use and copy the complaint phrases word for word, without tidying up the wording.

Is this better than listening to recorded sales calls?

It is not better, it is different, and it works when recordings are not an option. Recordings give you live back and forth in your own market. Public sources give you a wider, colder read across many companies, including ones nobody on your team has sold to yet. Most people at meritt end up doing both, starting with whichever is available today.