Let's talk the prospect's vernaculer, please?

Enterprise selling is about bonding and building credibility/trust. Prospects buy from people they trust. Prospects trust those who care about their (prospects) interests.
Prospects believe those who talk and relate to them in a familiar jargon. Yet few in software solution sales speak the customer's language. We stay comfortable selling technical merits because that's what we know best.

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Over the years of selling IT solutions, an area I have gotten good is the art of meticulous note taking. I don't trust my interpretations and remembering skills to summarize after the meetings. I particularly note sentiments, passions for specific topics and the spoken words, i.e the vernacular. My notes at times are so detailed, they remind me of the ones usually written court room clerks. Yet that stuff comes handy for the following reasons.

1. In a start-up we deal with LARGE sales territories and we talk with several clients. At times we don't get to talk to a prospect for a second time for months after the first meeting. That's when brushing up on what was spoken verbatim in the previous meetings helps me a lot.
   
2. When I bring in different solutions engineers to solve complex problems, many of them seldom interpret the customer problems right first time around.
   

I make my notes the bible for the team and very often ask them to refer to my notes as a way to go back to the drawing board!