Strong client relationships start with understanding what matters most to the customer and being able to clearly connect your solution to their business goals. “85% of business buyers are more likely to see you as a partner if you understand where their goals are, where their priorities are,” said Ben Cook, the president of Acumen Learning. He continued, “64% of reps don’t actually understand the industry of the customers they’re in, and by some estimates, 80% of salespeople cannot link their price and solution to the value they create for the client.”

That gap between what executives want to hear and what most sellers actually say was the topic of a From Day One webinar led by Cook and Kevin Cope, the founder and CEO of Acumen Learning. Drawing on more than two decades of experience working with organizations, including 34 of the Fortune 50, they outlined a mental framework they call the Five Business Drivers. Their core argument is that business acumen provides the missing layer beneath every sales methodology, and without it, even the most diligent sellers stall out at the executive level.

The Missing Layer Beneath Every Methodology

Cope notes the leading sales methodologies: challenger sale, solution selling, and SPIN Selling (situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff questions). Among them, all assume sellers already possess deep business acumen. 

The challenger sale, he says, presumes “great sellers have a deep understanding of the customer’s business.” SPIN selling asks reps “to help the buyer quantify the cost of their problem and the value of their solution in terms of hard dollars.” 

Cope and Cook have learned something that contradicts these methodologies after spending over 24 years delivering business-acumen training across 40 countries, training over half a million people. “As you go up in organizations and get to more senior levels, the gap in business acumen is surprisingly big,” Cope said. “People are experts in their role or their function, whether it’s IT, operations, or marketing, but when it comes to understanding how they impact business—that gap is big.”

That gap turns into lost deals. “It’s very easy and natural to lean into ‘this is the product I have, this is how it’s differentiated from my competition,’” Cook said. “A lot of times that conversation around product and solution is where most stay, feeling like that’s a story that wins.” But that’s not always the case. 

What Executives Actually Care About

“Executives actually don’t care about your product,” Cook said. “What they really do care about is how you help them solve real-world business problems that they themselves are dealing with right now.” Those problems manifest as questions about operating leverage, profitable growth, efficiency, scale, and return on investment. “Their owners or shareholders are really looking for that, and just talking about the product obviously really misses what that story is.”

The result is a gap between the seller and the buyer’s world that no amount of hard work can close. “You can work really, really hard and still feel irrelevant and disconnected from the things the person on the other side of the table really cares about,” Cook said. 

Executives want sellers who can answer two vital questions: What is the business problem this customer is trying to solve, and how does what I bring to the table specifically align with that problem? That’s what drives sales at the executive level. 

The Five Drivers That Shape Executive Thinking             

To bridge that gap, Cope introduced a mental model that he calls “an MBA in five words.” Every publicly traded company reports against the first three in its quarterly financial statements: the statement of cash flows, the income statement, and the balance sheet. He walked the audience through each driver in his model:

Cash

“If a company runs out of cash, they have two options. They either figure out a way to get more cash, or they go out of business,” Cope said. He used the now-defunct Sears as an example. Once the largest retailer in the world, representing 1% of U.S. GDP, Sears declared bankruptcy after 125 years of operations when its business model stopped generating positive cash flow. 

Profits

Profits tell a different story and help shape buying behavior depending on the margin profile. For example, Nvidia, at a 56% net profit margin, has customers “paying whatever Nvidia is demanding” for chips because they see AI-driven value,” he said. Walmart, at 3%, competes on price and efficiency. “A high-margin company is looking at ways you can help them create more value and be more innovative, whereas thin-margin companies are going to look at every penny.”

Assets

Assets require a careful balance between two competing priorities: strength, having enough inventory or cash to weather a downturn, and utilization, earning the best possible return on everything you own.

Growth

Growth, Cope says, is less about increasing revenue for its own sake and more about building innovation, competitive position, and upward mobility that attracts talent. 

People

People sit at the center of the model because, as Cook put it, “employees anticipating the needs of customers is the key to driving cash, profit, assets, and growth.”

From Product Expert to Value Architect

Applying the five drivers means doing the kind of pre-call homework many sellers skip, using a quick diagnostic to understand where a customer stands, says Cope. For example, if sales are growing but profits are not, the customer likely has a cost problem and will want to focus on efficiencies and budget discipline, while strong profitability paired with stagnant top-line growth signals a need to discuss speed-to-market, innovation, and market access. “If you only knew those two things, you’ve got at least a really good start as you walk in the door,” he added.

Different functions within the same customer organization rank the five drivers differently. A chief financial officer fixates on cash flow, margin trends, and return on capital. A marketing leader cares about growth and people. An IT or operations buyer thinks in terms of assets, scale, and cost efficiency. “That language has to be different from meeting to meeting,” Cook said “and the way you articulate solutions also should be very different.”

The most practical habit Cope recommends is one many sellers have never considered: listening to the customer’s quarterly earnings call, particularly the prepared remarks from the CEO and CFO. “It will take you about five to ten minutes to do that, but that will tell you what’s really in the mind of not only the CFO but the CEO as well,” he said. 

Real Results When Business Acumen Meets Sales

Cook shared proof points from organizations that embedded business-acumen training into their sales teams. A global manufacturing firm found that salespeople who completed the training closed 60% larger deals, averaging 6.5 deals compared with 4.5 for those who didn’t. 

Cope outlines three non-negotiables for organizations that want to build this capability: training must be customized for the company’s industry, products, and financials; it must be genuinely engaging for sales professionals who may be wary of financial concepts; and it must be actionable. “People have to know immediately how they can apply this content in their sales conversations,” he said.

The payoff, Cook suggests, isn’t just increased sales, but a deeper sense of purpose. “You love the products and solutions you’ve got, and you love the customers that you sell to,” he said. “This translative skill set between what you have and the value you can create for them not only drives more meaning to why we should be partners here, but drives more relevance, stickiness, and partnership-mindedness.” That, Cook says, is what separates a vendor from a trusted business advisor, and what turns a stalled deal into a win.

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Acumen Learning, for sponsoring this webinar. 

Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.

(Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock)