Do you ever experience pain when you pitch business? Do you cause some pain for your prospects as a result of those pitches? If you answered ‘yes‘ to either question, then read and heed these 10 Best Practices for creating Painless Sales Pitches.
1. 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, smart 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.
2. Do all your homework in the discovery stage. Ask lots of good questions to learn what they need, want… and can afford. Ask ‘why’ questions – ‘Why is this important to you?’ ‘Why didn’t the last project work?’
3. Ask what kind of information they want from you in your pitch or proposal, when they want it and how. Then, do what they tell you.
4. Make sure you’re appropriately positioned to deliver what they do need and want. If so, make that clear. If not, no sense wasting their time or yours.
5. Create a prospect-centric and easy-to-follow written proposal or presentation outline. Your executive summary should indicate their investment of time, staff resources and dollars up front.
6. 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.
7. Use prospect-centric language. Don’t confuse or annoy them with acronyms or jargon. Define any you must use once very clearly, or stick to common language. Don’t include a glossary of terms, as that makes your proposal look like an 11th grade term paper.
8. Stress your Value Proposition, and indicate why they should buy from you accurately and enthusiastically.
9. Ask for the close, or at least a close for moving on to the next step in their decision process.
10. End 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 prospect-centric Painless Pitches will greatly improve your chances of accomplishing both your pitch’s objective … and your goal.