Sales Pitch Tips To Ace That Presentation

 
A sales pitch is a concise, persuasive message that influences or persuades a potential customer or an an existing customer to purchase your product or service. It’s an opportunity for the salesperson to build the value of what they are selling by matching is closely to the wants, needs and requirements of the customer. Normally a sales pitch will cover needs analysis, pain points and urgency. Sales pitches come in many different formats and include formal presentations, one to one meetings in-person, over the phone or virtually or even a short 30 second elevator pitch.

Presenting and pitching are areas where most salespeople could do a lot better.

Most people in sales present a standard pitch that all their customers get to hear.

This doesn’t work. Your buyers are different and buy for different reasons. When people purchase products and services, they have what we call buying criteria. These are the overriding reasons for buying that are most important to them.

So, before you prepare a sales pitch, you need to understand what is going to motivate your customer to buy from you. What is important to them? What are their priorities and needs? Let’s take a look at some sales pitch tips to help.

 

Sales Pitch Tips

On our Sales Training Courses we stress the importance of asking sales questions before we pitch in a controlled and structured way. Many salespeople lack the self-discipline to plan and prepare their questioning strategy. Their lack of professionalism excludes them from the top 5% of salespeople who make all the money.

Here are the areas we need to probe into if we are going to successfully identify facts, opinions, needs and feelings that will enable us to put together a sales pitch that is truly persuasive:

• The contact. The person or people we are meeting with. We need to find out who they are, what they do and what motivates them.
• The organisation. This is the company they work for. What is happening in their business? How might changes in their business provide us with selling opportunities?
• The decision-making process. How do they make decisions, who gets involved and what are the relevant timescales?
• Current suppliers. Who are they buying from now and how well is the competition performing?
• Competition. Are we in a bidding situation with other companies to compete against?

li>Finance. What budgets have they prepared? What is their perception of price?

• Problems. What are the current issues that we need to help them solve? All selling is problem solving. What are their problems?
• Needs. What are their buying criteria? What do we need to provide to make us their choice of supplier?

Once you have all this information you are ready to begin preparing your sales pitch.

Here are some more ideas:

1. Proposition. Identify which services or products the customer is interested in. You need to have a killer proposition that is well suited and aligned to what they want.
2. Establish your objectives. Set yourself more than one objective so you have a fallback position if you fail to make the sale or move the sale forward in the way that you’d like.
3. Clarify what style and length of presentation the customer wants: for example, a full-blown PowerPoint presentation, a product demonstration or a short briefing followed by a discussion. This is important. I’ve turned up assuming it was a discussion, and the company was expecting death by PowerPoint!
4. Establish the key messages you want the customer to take away from your presentation – the main benefit or set of benefits that make your offering attractive. You need to tell a compelling story within your sales presentation.
5. Establish a few key points that support this message; relate your points to the customer’s needs and interests. Don’t over argue your case. The more arguments, the less persuasive your case.
6. Prepare a logical argument for buying your product or service based on your knowledge of the customer. However, also be aware that there will be emotional issues that have a major influence on the decision to buy so you will need a watertight logic vs emotion case to move forward with you.
7. Anticipate any sales objections or questions the customer might raise.
8. Prepare a beginning, a middle and an end for your presentation. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them and tell them what you told them.
9. Collate any facts and evidence to support your argument: for example, product samples, brochures, case studies or customer testimonials. Make sure your samples work.
10. Rehearse your sales pitch until you are satisfied. Practice makes perfect
11. Think about how you are going to close. You must look for commitment, either asking for the sale, or what the next phase of the sales process will be.

Make sure when you present your pitch you remind the customer of what was discussed in prior meetings. This shows you were listening. Finally, during your pitch remember to trial close. Trial closing is a process of asking questions during your sales pitch to get feedback on how the customer is feeling.

Trial close questions include:

• “How does that sound?”
• “Is that the kind of thing you are looking for?”
• “How do you feel about that?”