How To Create A Sales Pitch

 

 

It’s always great news when a sales prospect agrees to set aside 30-60 minutes to participate in a more comprehensive meeting with you.

But to ensure that a sale gets made, or at least the process towards making a sale continues, you need a well-scripted structured sales pitch.

Without a sales pitch that you’ve written down and practiced repeatedly, you risk forgetting to ask the right questions, droning on about details that aren’t appropriate at this stage to discuss, and failing to turn the call into a proper conversation.

All good CEO’s and salespeople are deeply passionate about what they’re selling. That passion is important, but being overly enthusiastic and not realizing the best way to guide a prospect in the sales process will result in lost deals and missed revenue targets.

Don’t turn a prospect off or cause them to lose interest.

Here is what you need to know to create an unbeatable sales pitch:

#1 Get to know the prospect

It’s great to be excited about another chance to sell your solution, but the first thing you need to do when having a sales call with a prospect is to get them talking about themselves and their business.

On paper you may think your prospect is a great fit for your solution. But you need to ask the right questions to qualify them.

  • Tell me about your role and responsibilities at {{Company}}?
  • How long have you been there for?
  • What do you like most about your role?
  • What kinds of new initiatives are most important to you today?
  • What motivated you to hop on a call with me today?
  • Are you person that usually makes the final decision on these types of relationships?
  • Have you allocated a budget for solving this challenge?
  • Are there other stakeholders who should be involved in the process?

You need to figure out who the person is that you’re talking to and why they agreed to talk to you.

If you quickly determine that the prospect is irrelevant or isn’t a good fit, you should save both your time and theirs by keeping your meeting short.

If the prospect is the right person to speak with and their company is a good fit for your solution, you should move on towards more in-depth qualifying questions.

#2 Ask industry-specific qualifying questions

Now that you know your prospect is the right person to engage with, ask more specific industry-related questions.:

  • How do you manage this problem today?
  • How much does it cost {{Company}} to manage?
  • How much time are you currently losing due to this challenge?
  • How many people from your team need to be involved?
  • What’s the most difficult part about managing this issue today?
  • What is your dream solution to solving this challenge?
  • Have you ever considered working with a company like yours?

You might feel uncomfortable asking so many questions of your prospect at the get-go. After all, you were the one to ask them for the meeting.

Shouldn’t you be doing more of the talking?

No.

People like to talk about themselves and their problems. If you’ve gotten your prospect to do most of the talking at the outset, that shows that the prospect is truly interested. It also gives you information you need to continue to guide the meeting towards where you want it.

If you have fears about being too nosy, practice with a colleague, so you get comfortable.

At this point, you are engaging in an open conversation with your prospect and the sales pitch should go in whatever direction seems most appropriate based on your conversation’s unique context.

However, once you’ve gotten sufficient answers, try to structure your sales call as follows.

#3 The Problem

Now that you’re engaged in a deep conversation with your prospect, you have an opportunity to guide them towards your solution exactly how you want.

First, start by framing the problem you’re solving in detail. The purpose of this is to establish common ground with your prospect.

If you like, you can use industry statistics or examples, but really this should be a well-thought out narrative that you can repeat to a child.

You can’t sell something to someone who doesn’t have a real pain point.

If you both agree on what the problem is, you’ll likely both agree on the solution.

Don’t forget to ask them if they’ve understood everything and if they have any questions!

Your aim with a triggered email series is to encourage customer or prospect engagement in response to a specific action.

#4 The Solution

Here’s your chance to finally start talking about the solution you can provide your prospect with.

But wait! Not so fast! The only aspects of your solution you should get into detail about are the value you can provide the prospect and their company.

This is not the time to do a full on technical webinar full of details of your features.

You need to explain what benefits your prospect will gain from this solution and how it solves their issues.

Ask them how it sounds to them. If they seem like they didn’t totally understand the value, you’ll need to repeat it in language they’ll understand further.

#5 How It Works

If your prospect agreed with you on the problem and bought into your solution, now is the time to do a brief demonstration.

If you’re selling a tech or software-based solution, you may want to do a brief walk through of your platform. If you’re selling a service, you can show how providing your services works behind-the-scenes and what the prospect will experience if they agree to become a customer.

Make sure to keep your demonstration brief and ask repeatedly if they’ve understood what you’re showing them and if they have any questions.

This part of the sales pitch should not be very long. This is not an onboarding session. It’s just a demonstration to get your prospect enthusiastic and to become a believer.

Conclusion

By now you should have a clear idea as to how interested your prospect is in becoming a customer of yours.

That doesn’t mean the sale is a done deal or that there won’t be more meetings to have with your prospect and other stakeholders.

But you should have a fair level of confidence that you know where things are heading.

Now is time to conclude your pitch by asking closing questions and scheduling next steps.

  • Do you have any questions about the information I’ve shared?
  • What aspects of our solution are you interested in exploring most?
  • Can we arrange another meeting with other members of your team to discuss this further?
  • From everything we’ve spoken about today, is this something you’re interested in moving forward with?

Getting your prospect to answer these questions will give you insight into how much of a priority moving forward with you is and hopefully finalize next steps.