Pillar 02 · Language · Release 03
Two DJs on the same stage, mixing in different keys at different tempos, is not a set — it is a train wreck. Two reps in the same pipeline review, using "qualified" to mean two different things, is the commercial equivalent. The crowd feels the first within four bars. Leadership feels the second at quarter end, when the forecast collapses.
The first pillar, Vision, answers where we play and how we win. Language answers something more mundane and more brutal: do we mean the same thing when we say the same word? Growth is not accidental. It is an architecture — and every architecture starts with a shared vocabulary.
Without a defined commercial language, every rep builds a private one. "Discovery is done" means a demo happened. Or a champion said "interesting." Or nothing at all. Multiply that by twelve reps and three regions, and your CRM is no longer a system of record. It is a collection of opinions.
The research on this is older than most SaaS playbooks, and it has held up:
revenue-growth gap between companies that clearly define their sales process and those that don't — 28% for those mastering three pipeline practices. Jordan & Kelly, HBR 2015
organizations moving from informal to formally defined, adopted processes consistently outperform on win rates — by chasing fewer deals that were never real. CSO Insights
of B2B sales content goes unused — not because it's bad, but because nobody agreed which word, stage, or buyer situation it maps to. Forrester
And there is a human cost that rarely makes the dashboard: when milestone definitions shift with whoever is asking, reps live in permanent ambiguity. Ambiguity is exhausting. People don't burn out from high standards. They burn out from moving ones.
In the OTGE grid, every pillar is scored across People, Process and Data. Language is where the three either lock together — or quietly drift apart.
People. A shared language is a coaching tool before it is a reporting tool. If "champion" has a definition — someone with personal stakes who sells internally when you're not in the room — a manager can coach to it: "Who is your champion, and what have they done without you this month?" Without the definition, the same conversation is vibes.
Process. Stage names are not language. Exit criteria are. And the critical design rule: exit criteria must be customer-verifiable, not seller-declared. "I sent the proposal" is seller activity. "The customer confirmed the evaluation committee and decision date in writing" is evidence. Deals advance on evidence, never on optimism.
Data. Your forecast is only as honest as your taxonomy. When "Commit" means the same thing in Antwerp, Amsterdam and Aachen, forecasts roll up clean. When it doesn't, you're not forecasting — you're averaging emotions. This is also the unlock for any serious use of AI on revenue data: models trained on undefined fields automate the confusion, faster.
Every pillar in this series ships one working instrument. For Language it is the simplest and the most resisted: a one-page Commercial Dictionary, owned by revenue leadership, versioned like a product.
Rollout matters more than authorship. Draft it with your senior reps, not for them — people defend what they help build. Then make it operational in three places: the CRM (fields mirror the dictionary), the weekly pipeline review (deals challenged against exit criteria, in the dictionary's words), and onboarding (day one, before the product deck).
This sits deliberately on top of the revenue architecture of Jacco van der Kooij / Winning by Design: the bow tie gives you the physics of recurring revenue; the Commercial Dictionary makes sure your whole company describes those physics in one tongue. Two DJs, one key, one tempo. That's when a room starts to move.
Score yourself
Click each cell, read what Chaotic (1), Defined (3) and Engineered (5) look like, and score what is demonstrably true today. If you can't show the artifact, it doesn't count.
Your Language score: – / 15 · below 9 means the dictionary is your fastest win
Release 03 · Free under CC BY-SA 4.0
Both instruments are free, like everything in the model layer. The one-pager is the artifact your leadership team signs; the workbook is the full working file behind it.
The craft is the business
A facilitated half day with your senior reps and revenue leadership. You leave with a signed-off Dictionary v1.0, stage exit criteria your CRM can enforce, and a benchmarked Language maturity score. The file is free; the room is the work.
Before: Term Audit completed by your team.
During: conflicts resolved, definitions co-created, exit criteria agreed.
After: Adoption ROA with owners, and a facilitator-scored maturity baseline.
SOURCES
Jordan & Kelly — Companies with a Formal Sales Process Generate More Revenue, HBR 2015
CSO Insights — 5th Annual Sales Enablement Study
Forrester — on unused B2B sales content
Next · Release 04
One pillar every two weeks. Follow along on LinkedIn or come back here — the grid on the homepage fills in as the series ships.