A communications professional caught herself mid-sentence:

"I've been talking about comms like I'm talking to another comms person, not the CEO."

Every word had been accurate. The audience was wrong.

You may have a proposal, a renewal, or a retainer going to a buyer before the year closes. The person who signs is rarely a peer in your field. It is a chief executive, a finance lead, or an operations head. That person has to approve the fee in their own language.

Why it lands

If your proposal would impress a colleague and confuse a chief executive, this is that moment. None of this is a personal failing. Expertise is built in a room full of peers.

The problem

Fluency is earned inside a field. Every field has words that compress years of practice into one term. Those words signal competence to peers.

To the person who signs, the same words are a cost. Each one is something the buyer has to translate before deciding.

Translation: the buyer will not pay for what the buyer has to decode.

What has not worked

  • Defining the jargon. A glossary still asks the buyer to learn your field. The buyer wants an answer, not a lesson.
  • Adding more detail. More detail in peer language is more to decode.
  • Simplifying the work. The work is not the problem. The vocabulary is.
  • Letting a champion translate. Your contact inside may understand you. The person who signs hears it secondhand.

The fix: translate before it reaches the buyer

  1. Name who signs. By role. Write down what that role is measured on: revenue, cost, risk, time.
  2. Mark every term a peer would use. Each word your field uses that the buyer's field does not.
  3. Replace each term with what it changes for the buyer. Example: "stakeholder alignment" becomes "the board approves the plan on the first pass."
  4. Read the proposal as the signer. Out loud, at speaking pace. Stop at every word the signer would have to ask about.
  5. Put the outcome in the signer's measure. If the signer is measured on revenue, the outcome is stated in revenue. If on risk, in risk.

See the difference? The work is the same. The signer can now approve it without asking someone else what it means.

The example

An illustration, not a client case.

Before: "A strategic narrative framework to drive stakeholder
alignment across internal and external channels."

After: "Your leadership team gives one answer when customers ask
about the merger, starting in the first week."

The first version is written for a peer. The second is written for the person who signs.

Your template

The decision: ____________ (proposal, renewal, retainer)
The person who signs (role): ____________
What that role is measured on: ____________
The date: ____________
Peer terms in my proposal:
  1. ____________  becomes  ____________
  2. ____________  becomes  ____________
  3. ____________  becomes  ____________
The outcome, in the signer's measure: ____________

What the record does not do

The translation lets the signer understand the outcome. It does not put a number on it.

What that outcome is worth to this buyer in dollars comes only from valuing the documented record. Not from what peers in your field charge.

Before the proposal reaches the person who signs, rewrite it in that person's language. Then have the outcome valued before you name the fee.