How to Make a Successful Sales Pitch

Learn how to make an awesome Sales Pitch that’s too good to Ignore. We share technics on how to turn sales leads into a successful sale.

What is a Sales Pitch?

In sales and Marketing, a Sales Pitch is a sales presentation aimed at convincing a potential buyer to appreciate a product or service as suited for their needs.

A sales pitch is a salesman’s attempt to persuade a potential buyer to buy or understand and trust what he is selling.

How to prepare for a Sales Pitch and Deliver it

While preparing for a sales pitch, there are standards that should be straight from the word go:

a) The objective of the Sales Pitch

A sales Pitch is a meeting like any other. Any good meeting must have an agenda either written down or at least mentally defined.

A good sales pitch should focus on why you asked for that presentation in the first place. You need to decide if the pitch is about getting your potential buyer know your product or you to know their problem.

The objective will help you anchor the pitch on what you need to get out of this meeting. If you are gathering information to better understand the client’s needs, you need a very interactive sales pitch that encourages them to speak more about their problem and the potential solution in their view.

Tactically get your buyer to talk about their business and challenges and listen to get where your product fits into their challenges or problem.

If if the aim of the sales pitch is for you to make the buyer understand your product, you will need a snappy way to plug your product into their business model.

Find, without wasting time a nice way to show the buyer how your product can close the gap that their business is experiencing. The buyer should make a mental image of how the business would be like after they purchase your product.

Whatever the objective of the sales pitch, however, you should not leave your pitch hunting. You must push to the next level to drive to a sale.

If you wanted to know their problem, now you do so what next? Or they wanted to know your product, now they do what next? Push it to the next level and closer to making a sale.

b) Create a Perfect Hook

The opening sentences of your pitch will determine if your buyer stays attentive or not. If its an email, the subject line might determine if the email will be read or flagged as mere spam.

Choose a catchy hook that will get your audience instantly interested in knowing more. Instead of “Are you interested in a cute Phone hybrid that saves you time” Go for “The Phone Hybrid that saves you $200 Daily”

c) Centre your Pitch on a theme – Main benefit

One of the mistakes salespersons make is to scatter their presentation in the hope that they will give too many reasons why someone should buy their product.

It might sound like a great idea to show your buyer that the product has multitudes of ways it will benefit him but if you don’t centre the benefits around the most needed intervention you will only manage to confuse them.

Identify and centre your presentation around the core solution that your client is most likely looking for. The rest should hinge on supporting this core benefit get even more solid.

d) Identify and Solve the problem

A sales pitch is about the customer. The success of your sales pitch depends on how well you identify their problem and how your product solves that problem.

It’s a common mistake by salespersons to get engrossed in their product and forget that the presentation is not about them and their product but the customer and their needs.

However much you describe how good an orange is, if I am looking for a pawpaw, you will be wasting my time. Do not describe how good the orange is, explain to me how your orange actually delivers the same food nutrients as the pawpaw I thought I needed.

e) Back your Pitch with facts

After you understand the problem your customer is trying to solve, you need to gather some facts. Speaking generally does not make you an authority, facts do.

By backing your sales pitch with solid facts, the buyer will gain confidence that you actually understand their problem very well and know without a doubt how your product will impact on their business.

f) Check and Re-check your facts and Grammar

Wrong grammar is a turnoff to many smart people. Wrong figures and facts is even worse. It’s quite easy to think you are talking about 60% when you are actually typing 90%.

You must be double sure that the facts and figures in your sales pitch are actually accurate.

Make sure to write short sentences in the simplest of language. This is a sales pitch, not a literature contest. Don’t use all the hard words to sound sophisticated even if you are using the correct scientific language you could lose a sale because you lost the buyer along the way thanx to some words he couldn’t fully appreciate.

If you must use complex scientific language, try to explain and make sure the buyer is following.

g) Keep it Short and sweet.

Try to keep your presentation straight and to the point. Keep it focused on what cant be left out. The shorter the better. Pay attention to what the buyer needs to hear and keep it sweet. Leave room for questions if the buyer needs more explanations don’t over-explain yourself by default.

h) Prepare for the worst

Sometimes, however you prepare, things go wrong. Be ready if say your presentation doesn’t work as planned because the projector is off. Have a ready print out.

While you have a saved copy on your laptop, having a second version saved on a memory stick might be a wise decision. Don’t let anything take you completely from the planned pitch to a quick off the head unplanned presentation.

i) Ask for the sale

Whatever stage of selling your pitch comes, the aim is to get a sale. Funny as it sounds, most salesmen go to pitch for a sale and actually spend their time talking about their product but not asking the buyer to buy it.

You are here to sale, Ask for the sale! Do not assume it’s still to early for the buyer to make a decision to buy. Don’t be scared to ask them at the end of your first meeting if they are ready to sign the order form.

j) Close and Leave.

They may seem like they still want to hear more but if you are done with your presentation please end it, agree on the next course of action and leave.

Time is Money if the pitch objective has been achieved do not drag it. End it. Dragging on and on will get you into the trap of getting all over the place. Don’t dilute your presentation with unplanned talk.

k) Follow Up

Many salespersons make great sales pitch but because they do not make a follow up they fail to turn it into a sale.

You may make a great pitch but the decision to buy may take a couple more weeks, months and sometimes even a year! If you do not make follow up it could either be forgotten or passed on to some other competitor.