Do you experience pain when you pitch business? Do you cause some pain for your customers as a result of those pitches? If you answered yes to either question, then read these 10 Best Practices for creating confident sales pitches.
- Realize the difference between your pitch’s goal and objective. While your goal is to win the business, your objective should be to provide the prospect with all the information they need to make a factual and fast decision. So, you can accomplish your objective but not your goal by making it very easy for them to realize you’re not the best choice.
- Do all your homework in the discovery stage. Ask lots of good questions to learn what they need, want and can afford.
- Ask what kind of information they want from you, when they want it and how. Then, do what they tell you
- Make sure you’re appropriately positioned to deliver what they do want. If not, no sense wasting their time or yours.
- Create a reader-centered and easy to follow written proposal or presentation outline. Your executive summary should indicate their investment of time, resources and dollars up front.
- Ensure the information you share clearly reflects what they said they needed or wanted. Restate their limitations of time, scope or budget to show that you understand and paid attention.
- Use client-centered language. Don’t confuse or annoy them with acronyms or jargon. Define any you must use once very clearly, or stick to common language.
- Stress your value proposition, and indicate why they should buy from you, accurately and enthusiastically.
- Ask for the close, or at least for moving on to the next step in their decision process.
- End your pitch with a strong, concise and enthusiastic summary of how you’re ideally positioned to provide them with what they need, want … and can afford.
Putting these simple Best Practices to work will differentiate you from the competition, reduce the pain you experience and cause and increase your confidence. Such world-class customer-centered pitches will greatly improve your chances of accomplishing both your pitch’s objective … and your goal.