The language of the deal and the quantifiable cost of sales English friction
- Viktoria Fogl
- Oct 14
- 12 min read
TL;DR Sales English is the language of the deal. Clear words make value specific, contain risk, and move the next step. Loose language drains the funnel and shows up as measurable revenue leak.
Key Facts
Topic: Sales English
Problem: Revenue leak from language friction in sales
Signals: vague discovery, generic value, “send info” stalls
Impact: lower win rate, longer cycle, forecast noise
Sizing: pipeline slice × friction share × win-rate gap
The Language of the Deal
You know that sinking feeling when a promising deal quietly fades out?
The buyer seemed engaged. The first call went well. But somewhere between “send me more info” and “let’s circle back next quarter”, the energy just disappeared. Nothing went wrong exactly, but nothing moved forward either.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: those deals often die because of lack of sales English skills.
Not bad grammar. Not accents. But small moments of unclear communication — a vague question, an overlong answer, a fuzzy value line — that quietly drain momentum. This is language friction, and it’s measurable.
In the majority of markets in the world, English is the language of the deal.
It’s how value gets made specific, how risk gets contained, and how next steps become commitments. When Sales English slips — even slightly — deals stall, cycles stretch, and forecasts lose shape.
The numbers back it up: large companies lose an average of $62.4 million a year to poor communication. Nearly one in five firms say they’ve lost a deal outright because of unclear language, often worth between $100,000 and $1 million.
And yet, most teams never measure it. They accept the “small losses” — the vague discovery notes, the follow-ups that go nowhere — as part of sales life. But those small losses add up fast.
This article will show you how to see the cost, count the leak, and start reclaiming it, all through clearer, sharper Sales English.
You’ll learn:
Why selling in a second language creates hidden drag.
How vague communication translates directly to lost revenue.
How to measure and fix your team’s Sales English gap with real numbers, not guesswork.
Because when your words get clearer, your deals move faster.
How Small Language Mistakes Turn into Big Revenue Leaks
Let’s start with something most sales leaders recognize: deals rarely collapse in one big moment. They fade.
A prospect says they’ll “think about it.”
A demo ends with “send me more information.”
Follow-up emails go unanswered.
It feels like buyer hesitation, but often it is language friction, the hidden drag that builds when your message doesn’t come across clearly or confidently.
Here’s what that looks like in numbers.
$62.4 million per year: that’s the average loss large companies report from unclear communication, according to SHRM.
18% of companies admit they’ve lost a sale outright because of miscommunication, and nearly a third of those losses were deals worth $100,000 to $1 million.
Internally, that same communication drag costs more than $15,000 per employee each year, in slow handoffs and “clarifying” messages.
Now, imagine your own pipeline.
Let’s say you’ve got $4 million in active opportunities. If 25% of those show language friction — maybe the discovery notes are vague, or follow-ups aren’t landing — and your win rate drops just 3–5 percentage points, that’s $30,000 to $50,000 of lost revenue this quarter.
That’s money you’ve already spent acquiring leads that never convert because clarity slipped.
The real kicker? Most teams never see it as a language issue.
They log it in the CRM as “no decision,” “lost to competitor,” or “budget freeze.” Under the surface, however, it’s often the same cause: value wasn’t stated clearly enough, risk wasn’t contained, or the next step wasn’t specific.
Poor communication doesn’t just slow deals.
It quietly shapes your entire forecast.
When salespeople use vague language with prospects, managers have to the most of the legwork to close deals. When buyers don’t understand the offer, they delay instead of decide.
Consequently, when both sides are unclear, revenue simply leaks out of the funnel.
Why This Happens: The Second-Language Load
If you’ve ever tried selling in a language that isn’t your first, you know how much brainpower it takes. You’re listening to the buyer, thinking through your next point, searching for the right words, and trying to sound confident... all at once.
That’s the hidden weight of working in a second language.
It’s not just about vocabulary or grammar. It’s about mental load. When you switch between languages, your brain works harder to control what you say and how you say it. The result? Slower responses, simpler word choices, and a tendency to play it safe.
In sales, that “safe” language often sounds like this:
“Yes, we can do that” instead of asking what the buyer actually needs.
“We offer solutions for many industries” instead of explaining one clear value point.
“Let me send you more details” when what’s needed is a direct next step.
Non-native English speaker salespeople are not necessarily unskilled in communication. They’re overloaded. Their brain is spending energy on how to speak rather than what to say.
Research backs this up. Studies on bilingual communication show that switching between languages increases cognitive control demands. That extra effort might only last a few seconds, but in a fast-moving sales call, those seconds matter. They can make a confident answer sound uncertain.
But it’s not all bad news. Selling in a second language can actually make you more logical, as it reduces emotional bias in decision making. The problem is that benefit often gets buried under the cost of slower delivery and vague phrasing.
If your team sells in English but thinks in another language, they’re fighting that drag on every call. Over time, they start avoiding moments that feel risky: asking for commitment, challenging assumptions, or pushing for a decision. Those are the very moments that close deals.
When communication takes too much effort, confidence drops.
When confidence drops, so does clarity.
And when clarity drops, revenue follows.
The Four Moments Where Sales English Decides the Deal
Every deal hangs on a few small moments. They often pass so quickly that nobody spots them, but they’re the points where trust either builds or breaks.
Sales English sits right in the middle of those moments. It shapes how buyers see you, how clearly they understand your value, and how fast they decide to move forward.
Let’s break down the four moments that make the difference.
1. When the buyer decides you understand their world
This happens in the first few minutes of a call. You ask a question, and the buyer instantly knows whether you “get it” or not.
If your questions are vague or too general, the conversation stays on the surface.
If they’re sharp and relevant, the buyer opens up.
Having good Sales English skills helps you sound specific. You know it is much more effective to ask, “What does success look like for you this quarter?” instead of “How’s business going?”
This level of clarity earns trust before you ever pitch a product.
2. When value lands in their numbers, not yours
Buyers don’t buy your value statement, they buy the part that fits into their results.
The difference between “We improve efficiency” and “You’ll save two hours per rep per day” is the difference between interest and action.
Clear, concrete English helps your value land where it matters. It forces you to put a number or outcome on the promise. That’s when it becomes real for the buyer.
3. When risk feels contained and reversible
Every buyer has one unspoken question: “What happens if this goes wrong?”. The clearer your language, the safer they feel.
Vague reassurances make them hesitate. Simple, specific phrases calm that fear.
Instead of saying, “We’ll make sure it works for you,” say, “You can test it with one team for three weeks, no cost.” It’s short, confident, and gives them control.
4. When the next step is so clear it’s hard to ignore
This is where many deals quietly die.
The rep ends strong, but the call ends soft. “Let’s stay in touch” or “I’ll send more details” sound polite, but they don’t move the deal.
With good Sales English skills you combine strategy with language: “Let’s meet next Tuesday at 10am to confirm your rollout plan. Does that work for you?” One sentence turns uncertainty into movement.
Small language choices decide these moments. Clear English creates forward motion. Unclear English leaves space for doubt, delay, and drift.
If you can train your team to master these four points, you’ll see deal momentum shift almost immediately.
How to Gauge the Revenue Leak
Most teams feel the cost of unclear communication, but few ever measure it. It hides inside familiar phrases like “no decision,” “stalled,” or “lost to competitor.” The truth is, a lot of those deals didn’t die because of product, timing, or price. They died because clarity slipped somewhere along the way.
Here’s how you can put a number to that.
Step 1: Choose a slice of your current pipeline
Pick a clean set of active opportunities. For example, all deals created this quarter or everything currently in late-stage review. You want a sample that’s big enough to be meaningful but small enough to analyze quickly.
Step 2: Estimate where friction shows up
Go through call notes and email threads. Look for signs of unclear communication:
Discovery questions that didn’t get full answers.
Buyers who went silent after “send more info”.
Next steps that never turned into meetings.
Count how many opportunities show these patterns. That’s your friction share.
Let’s say it’s around 25 percent.
Step 3: Estimate your win-rate gap
Compare your success rate between “clear” and “friction” deals.If your clear conversations close at 30% and your unclear ones at 25%, that’s a 5-point gap.
Step 4: Do the math
Multiply your total pipeline slice by your friction share and your win-rate gap.
Example:
Pipeline slice: $4,000,000
Friction share: 25%
Win-rate gap: 3–5%
Leak = $4,000,000 × 0.25 × 0.03–0.05
That’s $30,000 to $50,000 in lost revenue in this quarter, and this is just one slice.
If your data looks similar last quarter or next quarter, the leak is constant.
Step 5: Track what changes when clarity improves
Once you start coaching for sharper Sales English — shorter questions, concrete value lines, confident next steps — keep on measuring. You should see shorter cycle times, higher response rates, and fewer vague opportunities clogging your forecast.
That’s the payoff of clarity.
You’re not just improving language; you’re tightening the sales engine itself.
Sharper Sales English = Measurable Gains
When Sales English improves, the first thing that changes isn’t the numbers. It’s the mood.
Conversations start to sound lighter. Reps stop rushing to fill silence and start asking cleaner, more deliberate questions. Buyers open up. Everyone on the call seems a little more relaxed because they actually understand what’s being said.
Then the metrics catch up.
Deals move faster
Calls feel more focused because both sides know what’s being discussed. The rep doesn’t over-explain. The buyer doesn’t need to “think about it.” Each conversation ends with a specific next step, not another round of follow-up emails.
Win rates climb
Sharper language means clearer value.Buyers finally see the link between what you offer and what they care about. When that connection lands, decisions happen sooner, and more often. Even a three-point bump in win rate can turn into hundreds of thousands in recovered revenue over a year.
Coaching gets easier
Managers stop chasing vague feedback like “be more confident” and start coaching language directly. They can point to a single sentence and say, “Here’s where you lost clarity.” That level of precision changes the quality of feedback and the speed of improvement.
Forecasts become steadier
When next steps are concrete, pipeline reviews turn from guessing games into decisions. Forecasts get cleaner. Finance trusts the numbers again.
This ripple effect doesn’t stop with sales:
Product hears clearer problem statements as discovery notes make more sense.
Customer Success gets smoother handovers because promises are specific.
Everyone spends less time fixing miscommunication and more time building momentum.
In short: clearer Sales English creates cleaner business.
Sales Tools and AI Support for Clearer Communication
Clear communication doesn’t just come from skill. It also comes from the systems that support how your team works. The right tools can make it easier to stay sharp, consistent, and confident — especially when English isn’t everyone’s first language.
Here are a few worth knowing about.
A clean, focused platform for prospecting and outreach. It helps teams build targeted lists and run multichannel campaigns without the clutter of extra admin work. When your prospecting is organised, your communication follows suit.
If your team needs data fast, Apollo delivers. It’s ideal for quick list building and message testing. Many teams use it to check which version of their value line resonates most with international buyers.
A strong choice for teams who want everything in one place — calls, emails, messages, and pipeline. The less your reps switch between tabs, the more attention they can give to the words they’re saying and writing.
This is where Gen AI becomes practical. AI tools can help reps prepare call briefs, draft follow-ups, or rewrite long sentences into clear, natural English. The key is using AI as a co-writer, not a replacement. The best results come when a human voice stays in charge of tone, context, and empathy.
Used well, these tools save time and strengthen clarity. They don’t teach Sales English, but they give it room to breathe.
Clarity Is the Real Competitive Edge
When you look closely at why deals win or lose, it’s rarely luck. It’s language.
Every clear question builds trust.
Every confident sentence moves the next step forward.
Every vague phrase leaves space for hesitation.
Sales English is the bridge between what you mean and what your buyer hears. When that bridge is strong, your value feels obvious. When it’s weak, even the best product starts to wobble.
The data is clear enough: companies lose millions each year to miscommunication. But the real loss isn’t just in numbers. It’s in the energy that disappears when a great conversation goes nowhere. It’s in the rep who starts believing “that’s just how sales goes” instead of seeing what’s actually missing — clarity.
You don’t need to overhaul your process to fix it. You just need to make language part of the sales system. Train for it. Coach it. Measure it.
Once you do, you’ll notice the change immediately. Calls feel smoother. Buyers respond faster. Teams sound more certain. The forecast stops feeling like a guessing game.
Clarity doesn’t just make you easier to understand. It makes you easier to buy from.
Having exceptional Sales English skills is a definite competitive edge in our modern world.
Ready to see how much clarity could add to your bottom line?
Book a short consultation and bring one live opportunity.We’ll map where language friction slows your sales, and build a focused Sales English plan you can use straight away.
Because once your team speaks with clarity, your deals start to speak for themselves.
***Sources: Sales English, language friction, and revenue impact
1) Cost of poor communication (company-level)
SHRM — “The Cost of Poor Communication.” Summary of David Grossman’s analysis: large companies (100k+ employees) reported an average loss of $62.4M per year from inadequate communication. Annotation: this covers meetings, email, handoffs — the same failure points that slow sales conversations. SHRM
2) Lost sales due to miscommunication (deal-level)
Economist Intelligence Unit (with Lucidchart) — “Communication barriers in the modern workplace.” Survey finding: 18% of respondents said miscommunication led to the loss of a sale, and nearly 30% of those losses were US$100k–US$999k. Annotation: widely re-cited baseline for deal loss tied to language/communication issues. d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net
Family Enterprise Foundation — “How language barriers affect international business.” Plain-language recap of the same EIU statistics (18% lost sales; ~30% of those in the US$100k–$999k band). Useful as a non-gated reference. familyenterprisefoundation.org
3) Per-employee communication tax (time and money)
Axios HQ — “2023 State of Essential Workplace Communications.” Benchmark that ineffective communication costs >$15,000 per employee per year (and ~US$2T across the U.S.), with breakouts for senior roles. Annotation: handy for internal “people-cost” framing. axioshq.com+1
4) Second-language load and performance (why reps default to “safe” language)
Bosma et al. (2020) — Switching direction modulates the engagement of cognitive control… Shows that reading code-switched sentences engages domain-general cognitive control, consistent with added control demands when navigating between languages. Annotation: supports the point that bilingual processing can add load in real-time tasks. ScienceDirect
UCF Honors Thesis (2023) — Bilingual Switch Cost Effect on Language Processing. Educational thesis summarizing evidence that switching between languages can require extra cognitive effort. Use as a supplementary explainer when a peer-reviewed summary is too technical. STARS
Note: Some studies (e.g., Li 2021) find limited or context-dependent switching costs. That nuance is fine to acknowledge; in live selling, even small added control demands can slow delivery. PMC
5) Foreign-language effect (the nuance)
Costa, Foucart, Arnon, Aparici, & Apesteguia (2014) — “On the foreign language effect in decision making.” Classic paper showing reduced susceptibility to some decision biases when operating in a foreign language. Annotation: useful nuance — the bias drop can be real, but in live sales the delivery cost can outweigh the benefit without training. jose-apesteguia.github.io
Wired (Keysar et al. 2012 summary) — “Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational.” Media summary of the Psychological Science research showing lower framing bias in L2. Good as a readable companion link. WIRED
How these sources map to claims in the blog
“$62.4M per large company” → SHRM (Grossman). SHRM
“18% of firms lost sales; ~30% of those $100k–$999k” → EIU (primary) and Family Enterprise Foundation (summary). d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net+1
“~$15k per employee per year” → Axios HQ report. axioshq.com
“Extra cognitive load in L2 can slow delivery” → cognitive-control / code-switching evidence. ScienceDirect+1
“Foreign-language effect can cut certain biases” → Costa 2014 and Keysar et al. 2012. jose-apesteguia.github.io+1
