Don’t do a Sales Pitch: Have a dialogue with the buyer
Just to make it clear: Don’t do a sales pitch – have a dialogue!
What is a Sales Pitch?
A Sales Pitch is when you have a product or service that you want to sell, and you have a very small window of time in which you can convince the buyer to go ahead with the sale. In order to make an effective pitch, you need to know about your customer, especially in regards to what they’re looking for, what challenges they face, a detailed way in which your product or service will help them, and what benefits they’ll receive afterwards.
The idea of opening with a sales pitch is seen as negative, and there’s a great reason for this. It’s because it implies that you’re presenting a solution to a customer, but in reality, that’s not how a buying situation works. This is the key thought. It’s not a Sales situation, it’s a buying situation, and as such, first you need to focus on a needs discovery, and only after this can you pitch.
These days, sales pitches are usually only a minute or two, because people want to be sold instantly, and time is money. Make sure you know exactly what you want to say, so you can deliver the sales pitch clearly and effectively.
In essence, a pitch consists of two parts: your Sales concept, and pitch deck. There’s plenty of ways to build a successful pitch deck that works for you, as there are endless different types of Sales models and methodologies available, with more being added every day. Generally, we recommend using a Sales Enablement Software, as this will allow you to consolidate your method and deck in the same place.
Focus On The Needs Discovery
So part one: the methodology. The concept is simple: first you discover their needs, making sure to understand their pain points, and then you tell them clearly how your product or service will resolve what they have just described. By implementing this straight-forward methodology and understanding what they need, you can help ensure that your pitch will be well received.
It’s important that your entire company is aligned with the sales pitch, because this is essentially the message that the product or service wants to deliver: we can do this, and it will help you.
Your Impact is Key in Your Selling Approach
There are many selling approaches; for example, the “Spin” model revolves around the following order for a successful pitch:
- Situation
- Problem
- Implication
- Need/payoff.
Although you might need to consider these four steps, there are a lot of models that tap into the same general principle, and it’s a matter of doing your research, and finding what works for you. For example, there’s the Challenger approach, Solution Selling, Conceptual Selling, the Sandler Selling System, Inbound Selling, and many more.
They all boil down to the same thing, though, which is: analyse the situation, figure out the customer’s problem, then find out what the actual effect of the problem is. Is it that they sell less than they need? Do they have too many sick employees? Do they struggle with effective communication? Find out what physical impact these problems have on the company.
How to Structure Your Sales Pitch
Then, finally, present your solution. Make the sales pitch.
When composing your pitch, it’s important to contain both hard data to back up your statement, but also remember you’re telling a story: the story of why your product exists, how it’s helped people before, and how it’s going to help the current client. Therefore, a general time-line is a smart idea to keep in mind. This includes:
- How your product came to be a.k.a. what problems existed in the world that required the birth of the product
- The physical benefit you’ve talked about what you wanted, but is that what was created? Shoot them your one-liner here to summarize the product statement.
- The process that’s taking place in order to take the problem to a solution. The client doesn’t need all the details, but wrap it up in such a way that shows it’s a straight line.
- Success stories! Everyone loves a good success story, and don’t forget to add in those hard numbers to back it all up.
- Open a discussion by ending your pitch with something thought-provoking, that helps create a dialogue with your customers, who have just been patiently sitting and thinking about all the things you’ve just told them, and how it will help them.
In this way, you can see that in order to be a solid Sales rep, you do not naturally need to be born to the role, you just need a tried and tested formulaic approach that works. As long as you bear in mind that your product or service can solve a problem, and use the above method to explain, as clearly as you can, exactly how this problem can be solved, you’ll have interested clients.
Create a Dialogue
One crucial element of this pitch appears in Step 5, and that is opening a discussion. The best Sales pitches create dialogues, so instead of talking at the client, you invite them to start thinking and talking about your product and service along with you. One way you can do this is by using supporting Sales Dialogue content, such as the Sales Enablement software which is geared towards your pitch. For example, your presentation should invite your client into a discussion, rather than just being a show and tell, and you can ensure that there are questions and – if available – interactive features in order to engage them.
Essentially, the entire deck is everything you need to clearly communicate the solution that solves customers’ problems, as well as clearly communicating what your product or service can do; its impact. If you can communicate its impact, then you can solve the customer’s problem. If you can solve the customer’s problem, you have a sale.
Support Your Sales Dialogue with a Sales Enablement Tool
The next part of using Sales Enablement to create your pitch and deck is having a visual element, and there are many Sales Enablement tools out there which will facilitate this. For example, presentation of material is crucial, and if you are still using hard copy, we can strongly suggest switching over to a presentation-based method, with any hard copy materials digitalized and contained within the presentation.
Beside attractive visuals, it is also important to pay attention to your presentation flow. As when creating the pitch itself, focus on what you want to achieve, and tell your story in such a way that opens dialogue. As they say, a picture tells a thousand words.
Be Prepared to Answer Any Type of Question
It’s also important to make sure that your full Sales deck as well as all of your presentations are dynamic enough to always answer any questions. Even though you may be full prepared to answer one set of questions or touch on several pain points, you will never know what the customer will ask for during the meeting, so by having a deck that’s able to fluidly jump along in the dialogue with the customer will increase your likelihood of selling more and being able to cover a variety of customer needs.
Not only should you be so well acquainted with the material that you know exactly where to go for any question, but you should also have material that supports a multitude of questions without becoming overwhelming, so finding that balance in your deck and being prepared to manage it, is crucial.
Improve Your Sales Pitch Based on Data Analytics
By using a Sales pitch that is able to generate data and insight from every single customer meeting, we get insights that depict what ideal customers are looking for, or what most successful Salespeople are doing differently from lower performers. You will then be able to spot trends from customers that converted, as well as trends from those who did not. It can give a bigger clue as to why certain leads don’t turn into customers.
If you use traditional material like PowerPoint, PDF or paper print, you don’t gather any kind of data on it, which is why using the full Sales Enablement Tool in your deck is always the smartest way to go, and why we earlier recommended switching to full digitalization. Traditional methods do not add any value to perfecting your pitch, except for providing the Sales Rep. with an element of visual support in the Sales meeting. As soon as you use a Sales Enablement Tool, then your sales pitch becomes much more than just a pitch, it becomes a tool for the organization to work smarter and grow revenue.
Remember, the best pitches can be taken home and followed up with, so try to ensure your Sales Enablement software contains ways for you to send the relevant and discussed content to your client after the meeting. Make sure that you choose a Sales Enablement software that is able to track the ways that the buyers interact with your sales material, so you can gain insights on where your strongest and weakest points of interest were, then tinker with your pitch formula until you perfect it.
Want to learn more?
If you want to learn more about sales and sales enablement, then join our Webinars.