We asked three sales experts

Knowing your ICP's firmographics — size, industry, tech stack — isn't the same as understanding their world. Reps consistently say they lack their buyers' real, industry-specific pain points. How does a rep build genuine fluency in their ICP's problems fast enough to sound credible to a buyer who deals with them every day?

Diego Mangabeira

AE - The Linux Foundation

You can memorize firmographics in an afternoon, but you have to borrow fluency from the people who live it — not through research, but from conversations.

I ask current customers to describe their worst day, and I steal their exact language.

I read subreddits and Slack groups where buyers complain to each other, not the vendor whitepapers.

Then, I test the vocabulary on real calls and watch faces.

When I use their words, they lean in. When I use my own, they tend to glaze over.

You'll never out-know a buyer about their own world. Luckily, you don't have to — you just have to prove you've listened to people like them.

Leslie Venetz

Founder - The Sales-Led GTM Agency

I begin every engagement with an ICP audit. Sales orgs most commonly make two mistakes:

First, applying the marketing concept of ICP into sales territories.

Sellers don't have a single ICP — they have multiple customer segments that are ideal for unique reasons.

The pivot is centering the customer’s ever-changing pain points over the company’s static ICP description. 

The second? Having accounts are not segmented deeply enough prior to writing sales value propositions. 

I apply a five-filter rule — each prospect list has five or more layers of segmentation, allowing sales teams to more clearly ask and answer what a given segment sincerely cares about.

Davidson Hang

Head of Business Development - Untap Your Sales Potential

You'll know you've uncovered a meaningful pain point when a conversation starts to flow naturally.

Time flies, and it feels less like a sales call and more like a conversation with an old friend.

You're talking about something they genuinely care about, and friction is minimized.

You get there through curiosity and pattern recognition.

Talk to customers, listen to call recordings, read case studies, and ask thoughtful follow-up questions instead of rushing to pitch.

Over time, you'll notice the same challenges coming up again and again.

That's when you stop sounding like a salesperson who memorized an industry and start sounding like someone who truly understands the world your buyer lives in every day.