The Executive Voice

This is the third week of a series called ‘Communicate like a …‘, where we look at how professionals outside of tech communicate and what we can learn from their approach.

Communicate like a JOURNALIST

Use The Inverted Pyramid Structure

The inverted pyramid model is a journalistic structure in which you present the main idea or important/critical information first. Almost every corporate communications specialist tasked with writing press releases, investor news, or company updates knows it well. And while it isn’t right for every type of communication, it’s becoming increasingly useful in tech, where leaders often need to explain change, risk, innovation and market shifts quickly and clearly.

See the model presented visually below.

Regardless of whether you have internal or external comms people crafting urgent and important news on the company’s behalf, as a leader, you should familiarise yourself with the inverted pyramid model to organise your thinking about the information you’re ultimately responsible for disseminating.

Side note: As a comms specialist, I've found that the most important information is often buried in the third, fourth, or fifth paragraph of content I’ve reviewed across press releases, reports, sales proposals, and the like. My first order of business (always) was to find that hidden value statement or crucial announcement and move it to the top.

People are impatient; their concentration span is not as good these days because it’s being pulled in every direction, so even if your information isn’t urgent, your audience, including staff, partners, clients, and investors, often prefer the main point to be presented right up front, immediately.

And another thing: the inverted pyramid model also supports plain-language communication, which matters now more than ever. Uncertainty and constant change have made people less tolerant of complicated verbiage or corporate waffle. They want the point, the proof and the implications without having to dig through layers of verbal sludge. Clear, orderly information helps people understand what matters and why.

The inverted pyramid model is also useful when communicating sections of your sales communication, such as explaining your solution or service and who will lead a technical transformation or implementation.

So, before your next announcement, sales presentation or internal update, think like a journalist. Present the main point straight away, check your facts, name the evidence and explain why it matters.

You’re busy, so to help you further, scroll down to the ‘Something Extra’ section right at the bottom for prompts you can use to craft content following the inverted pyramid model.

Free Will, Account-Based Marketing, and The Buying Group

A recent article I read in MIT Technology Review discusses free will and whether we have it. Neuroscientist Uri Maoz, who studies it, describes his work as trying to understand how our “wishes, desires, beliefs, turn into actions.”

Personally, I think we often don’t act or respond out of free will but are pulled by forces beyond our conscious understanding.

The same goes for our B2B tech buyer, especially in high-value, complex sales, where we negotiate with up to 13 decision-makers. Maybe more.

That matters because complex tech sales aren’t won by persuading a rational decision-maker to act on their free will. While your buyer thinks they’re making an independent decision, they’re not. Each person in the decision process is being pulled by different needs, wants, desires, fears, assumptions, concerns, political pressures, and their own (sometimes unconscious) definition of risk.

And that means persuasive communication fails if we don’t first work hard to understand what’s driving our buyer, what’s beneath the iceberg, so to speak.

When I used to write persuasive copy for large, multi-million-dollar bids and the pursuit team had little insight into the buying team, I knew my beautiful, compelling copy was garbage. That’s because I didn’t know if we were speaking to the right motivations, drivers and needs; we were just guessing.

The better our understanding of what ‘forces’ shape and bend the buyer’s will, the more persuasive our argument becomes. No smoke and mirrors or salesy copy required, which is why Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is crucial these days for pursuit marketing. And if you’re not doing ABM, you should be.

One of the most critical and initial steps in ABM/pursuit marketing involves stakeholder mapping. Not just listing the key decision-makers and influencers, but going further. We can use the 5 Ws from the Inverted Pyramid model to do this:

Who are they?
What role do they play in the buying group? Are they the decision-maker, budget holder, technical evaluator, end user, influencer, blocker or internal champion?

What do they do?
What are they responsible for? What outcomes are they measured against? What problems are they expected to solve?

Where do they sit in the decision?
Are they close to the problem, close to the budget, close to implementation, or close to the political risk if the project fails?

When do they get involved?
Are they shaping the early conversation, validating the solution, approving the spend, managing the rollout, or joining late with objections?

Why do they care?
What do they want to gain, protect, avoid or prove? What would make this decision feel safe, valuable or worth backing?

Getting to the nitty-gritty of the above is the starting point for asking the right people in the buying group the right questions to uncover the hidden, unseen, or unconscious needs and desires of each decision-maker.

Pursuit teams that follow this process ultimately create a more positive buying experience for potential customers. It also means you’re more likely to shape a solution that effectively addresses the potential customer’s real business problem, thereby reducing buyer regret. And it means you can confidently charge a premium rather than fight over price because you’ve made the value clear to the people who shape the decision.

Of course, use AI to help you develop a stakeholder map. Scroll down to the ‘Something Extra’ section at the bottom to get your prompt.

The New Rules of Selling in Tech

Part 3 of a four-part series exploring how AI is changing the B2B sales function and what you need to do to continue succeeding.

You Need Technical Storytellers

Last week, we talked about how the middle ground in B2B sales is disappearing. AI is taking over the predictable - like slide decks, feature comparisons, and follow-ups. What’s left is the ‘Human Premium’, where critical thinking, judgement and communication become the differentiator.

With many tech companies now selling AI-related solutions, we’re moving into a situation where it’s not just about proving capability, it’s about showing architectural proof - this week’s topic.

It involves wading into the client’s data sandbox and getting more technical about our AI solutions and how they safely work in the client’s environment.

This needs Technical Storytellers who can translate technical capabilities into buyer confidence. (Or we need to train our technical wizards to become compelling storytellers).

Because their job isn’t just to explain the architecture. They need to explain why it matters commercially. They can take messy ERP data, fragmented systems, governance issues or integration risk and explain what the buyer needs to understand without drowning them in technical detail.

They should be able to:

1. Turn architecture into a business consequence
Not “our agent connects to multiple data sources,” but “this means your teams can make decisions from cleaner, more reliable information.”

2. Explain risk without creating panic
Buyers know their data is messy. A good technical storyteller names the risk, then shows the path through it.

3. Prove value inside the buyer’s reality
They don’t hide behind a polished demo. They show how the solution performs against real-world constraints, imperfect data and operational complexity.

4. Make technical trade-offs visible
They explain what is possible now, what needs remediation, and what should not be rushed.

5. Give the C-suite a reason to trust the solution
Executives don’t need every technical detail. They need to know the solution is credible, governed, commercially useful and deliverable.

This is the new sales edge: not just having proprietary IP but having people who can make that IP make sense.

Musk V Altman War

One of the biggest news items this week is the case brought by Musk that claims “Altman and Greg Brockman, another OpenAI co-founder, conspired to enrich themselves at Musk’s expense and asks the court to remove them from their leadership positions and to restore OpenAI to a full nonprofit. OpenAI has said Musk is simply trying to undercut a competitor to his own AI company, xAI.”

POV: Unlike last week’s warm, mushy messages from Apple’s outgoing CEO, this week the language gets petty and mean. Musk proves that just because you’re a billionaire doesn’t mean you can always manage your emotions or politely joust with your competitors/enemies. Nevertheless, Musk is an outlier and gets away with his often crude and rude comments, like calling OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, ‘Scam Altman’, and accusing him of ‘looting’ a charity. While entertaining, it’s a lesson in how not to communicate as a leader, if you prefer to act dignified, that is.

Phrase of the Week

AI Deflation: The new shorthand for an uncomfortable truth: when AI makes work faster, clients start expecting the same output for less money. It’s not just an Indian IT services problem. It’s a warning for B2B tech companies generally: if your value is priced by effort, AI will compress it. If it’s priced by outcome, you have a stronger defence. We’re entering the era where buyers expect faster delivery, lower cost and clearer proof of value, all at once.

Better Writing Using the Inverted Pyramid Model

Need help crafting a news or investor update? What about quickly pulling together a compelling executive summary or solution summary as part of an RFP or tender? See the prompts below.

Prompt 1: For Leaders Writing a Press Release or Investor Update

Prompt 2: For the Strategic Seller and Solution Lead. Use this prompt when writing an Executive Summary or Solution Summary

B2B Tech Buying Group - Stakeholder Mapping Using the 5 Ws

ABM/Pursuit marketing made easy. Start fleshing out your stakeholders using the prompt below. The output will give you a starting point for discussion, debate, brainstorming and next steps with a wider team.

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