A rep I know sells IT infrastructure software to six
A rep I know sells IT infrastructure software to six industries. Last month, he had two sales calls with regional bank CIOs. He could not name the bank’s primary regulator.
That sounds small.
It is not. It tells the buyer he has not studied the room. In banking, the regulator is always in the room.
I see this with many SaaS sellers pitching regional banks.
They use the same talk track they use everywhere else. SOC 2, cloud migration, ROI, digital transformation. None of it is wrong.
It is just not what the Banking CIO is measured on.
The Banking CIO is thinking about OCC exams, core uptime, MRA closure, Board risk, examiner questions, and the Chief Risk Officer’s silent veto.
The vocabulary gap is the deal gap.
Ask about cybersecurity & the CIO may talk about NIST CSF 2.0 maturity scoring. A lot of sellers answer with a SOC 2 report. That is when the CIO puts them in the “does not really understand banking” bucket.
Ask why a bank has not replaced an 18-year-old Fiserv core, & the seller hears “high switching costs.”
So they assume the buyer is slow. The buyer is managing career risk. A failed core conversion is a Board-level event with possible OCC action.
This is why generic discovery fails in banking.
The seller thinks they are asking good questions. The buyer hears questions that prove the seller does not understand what is at stake.
So I built a 10 question scorecard for B2B tech sellers who sell into regional banks.
It takes two minutes. It tells you whether you are walking into the Banking CIO conversation as an Outsider, Generalist, Banking Aware seller, or Fluent operator.
A Fluent seller does not ask the CIO to explain the basics.
They know who owns TPRM intake. They know why an OCC exam window freezes decisions. They know which peer reference moves the deal forward.
They know the buyer before the call starts.
That is the difference between sounding interesting and sounding safe enough for the Board Risk conversation.
I attached the scorecard, answer key, & diagnostic. Take it before your next regional bank call.
If you score under 6, the issue may not be your sales skill. It may be buyer fluency.
Inside Buyer Intel Accelerator, you can practice against the Banking CIO persona with the full research package behind it.
80 free credits. No card required.
Start a trial - or send me a DM & I will get you set up.
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