6 Tips For Delivering The Perfect Sales Pitch
By the end of this post, your sales pitch will be better than an MLB superstar throwing a 105 mph fastball – please forgive the sports reference. 🙂
But first, let’s remember where we’re at in the process …
When you start your sales pitch, you’re a little over halfway through the overall sales process.
As a reminder, here’s an overview of the sales process:
- Prospect
- Contact
- Build rapport
- Qualify
- Pitch
- Handle objections
- Follow up
- Close
Up until this point, you’ve mostly been researching, asking questions, and listening to learn more about our prospect.
Now, during the pitch, it’s time to talk a little more about the product or service you’re offering. But not too much.
What is a pitch? ⚾️
A pitch is when a pitcher throws a baseball from where they are standing on the pitcher’s mound toward home plate where a batter will try to hit the ball with a bat.
Oh wait, we’re talking about sales … 🙂
In sales, a pitch is when a salesperson explains the value of their product or service to a prospect, and ultimately, asks the prospect for the sale.
Here are six tips for the perfect sales pitch:
- Keep it short
- Use a script
- Customize for the prospect
- Make it conversational
- Tell a story
- Paint a picture of success
1. Keep it short
According to AI analysis of 121,828 web-based sales meetings by Gong.io:
“Deals that close use 9.1 minute sales deck presentations, on average, during the introductory sales meeting. Lost deals involved sales deck presentations of 11.4 minutes, on average.”
It’s also based in neuroscience.
John Medina, a molecular biologist at the University of Washington Medical School, says,
“The brain seems to be making choices according to some stubborn timing pattern, undoubtedly influenced by both culture and gene.”
Medina cites peer-reviewed studies that show people tune out of a presentation in the first 10 minutes.
Which is why Apple presenters keep their presentations to less than 10 minutes during their product launches.
And you should keep your sales pitch to a similar time frame.
Click here to read more about the Gong.io research.
Click here to read more about the neuroscience from Inc.com.
2. Use a script
Like any good actor or actress, you should memorize your script before the performance.
If you’re selling on the phone, you’ll have the added advantage of being able to read directly from your script in real-time (just make sure you don’t sound too robotic).
Especially if you’ve just started a new sales role, using a script will help to keep you from rambling when you don’t know what to say, which is natural when you’re still getting used to a new pitch.
3. Customize for the prospect
Before you start your pitch, you should have learned a lot about your prospect during rapport building and qualifying.
So don’t use the same cookie-cutter pitch that you’ve used for every other prospect.
For example, if you’re selling CRM software and the prospect has told you they’re a small startup with only five sales reps, then obviously don’t show them the Enterprise setup with 100+ seats.
Or, if a prospect tells you they’ve already done some research on your product and they’re really interested in a certain feature, you should probably spend a decent amount of time talking about that specific feature.
4. Make it conversational
One of our least favorite misconceptions about sales is that it’s all about talking.
It’s not.
Even during the pitch—the part of the sales process where the salesperson is doing the most talking—we still want to be constantly hearing from our prospect.
There are many strategies for keeping the pitch conversational.
The most basic strategy is just remembering to ask your prospect a question every 30 seconds or so.
Click here to read more about how to ask better questions.
A more advanced strategy is something we call “mini-closing.”
Click here to read more about the magic of mini-closing.
5. Tell a story
The key to a good story is conflict.
In your favorite fantasy novel, that conflict might be between the dragon of evil and the knight of good.
In sales, that conflict is between the prospect’s pain point and the solution that your product or service is offering.
The story you tell about your product in shining armor slaying the dreaded pain point and saving the business in distress should be exciting and engaging.
Tiffani Bova, sales executive at Salesforce, writes,
“Being a storyteller is a skill not often discussed on sales teams, but it can be the secret that sets a good sales pitch apart from the best sales pitch. Tell the story of where their business is now, and the vision of what could be.”
Click here to read the full post on the Salesforce blog.
6. Paint a picture of success
Let’s say you’re selling a POS system to an old-fashioned restaurant.
The restaurant owner has told you how stressful it’s been to keep track of all their orders on paper tickets.
So here’s how you paint the picture of success:
“Imagine this, Jan. All your waiters and waitresses will take down orders on their iPads and the orders will automatically pop up on a monitor for the kitchen staff. No more paper! No more sifting through stacks of receipts when you’re doing accounting. No more losing track of orders and having customers get upset with you and your waitstaff. Doesn’t that sound a lot less stressful, Jan?”
Your prospect is going to be visualizing either way.
Without your guidance, they’ll be visualizing the negative—their wallet getting lighter, how angry their boss will be if this doesn’t work, etc.
You need to walk them through a visualization of the positive—how great life will be once they’ve bought your product and finally get some relief from their pain point.
Here’s a summary of our tips for the perfect sales pitch:
- Keep it short
- Use a script
- Customize for the prospect
- Make it conversational
- Tell a story
- Paint a picture of success