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8 Essential Tips for Creating Effective Sales Pitches

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | 8 Essential Tips for Creating Effective Sales PitchesYour sales pitch is vital in securing clients for your business. Without a great sales pitch, you’ll have a hard time meeting your quotas or keeping your business afloat. But over 40 percent of salespeople say that it’s the most difficult part of the process. If you want to stay ahead of the game and become the best salesperson you can be, apply the following tips to create more effective sales pitches.

1. Make it a conversation

The days of talking at your prospective customers are over. Today, people prefer to be part of a conversation with sales representatives. Modeling your sales pitch to accommodate input and questions from your prospects creates an atmosphere of camaraderie and transparency.

For instance, you could begin by asking them a question. If you’re making a pitch for memberships to a spa, you could ask your prospect “What is a table shower?” You can capture their interest and sate their curiosity at the same time with that conversational gambit.

2. Offer solutions

Many novice salespeople will focus on talking up the features of their product or services. But this is an old-fashioned and ineffective approach. Customers don’t just want to know how good your products are; they want to know it can help them with their problems.

If you’re selling insurance for condominiums, talk about probable solutions your company is offering. For example, when selling insurance to condominiums in Florida, talk about how you offer financial security in case of hurricanes or flooding.

3. Support your pitch with facts

Salespeople have gotten the unfair reputation for being unreliable. According to a recent survey, an overwhelming 97 percent of people say they don’t think they can trust salespeople. Know that your prospects are no longer willing to take your word about your products or services. Support your pitch with solid and authoritative facts.

Your company should have case studies and expert research on the efficacy of your products and services. In a pinch, provide prospects with authentic customer testimonials which could be just as persuasive.

4. Become an adviser

People are looking into value-laden interactions with sales representatives. They’re not just looking for people who will sell them things, they’re looking for experts. Approximately 78 percent of customers are looking for salespeople who can offer them trustworthy advice.

Do your research not just on the benefits of your product or services, but also its application. You should be able to talk to prospects confidently about how to best use your products to improve their lives or businesses. Offer insights gleaned from your experience with the product to establish authority and trust with the prospect.

5. Identify objections

Before you even pick up the phone or meet with a prospect, you should do your homework and identify their most likely objections to buying your product. You can go online and search for reviews and scroll through forums regarding your products and see what people are saying. Come up with reasonable counterarguments for these objections.

If people are mostly concerned about the cost of your services, bring up discount programs or alternative payment plans. Offer solutions to their objections and you can secure a sale.

6. Get ready to negotiate

When prospects are hemming and hawing without closing, it’s time to reach out and negotiate. Their willingness to bargain will indicate how serious they are about closing the sale. Before going into a meeting, set your minimum acceptable terms for the pitch. Negotiate with the prospect and only ever put the minimum acceptable terms on the table as a last resort.

7. Ask them for the sale

Confidence is important for being a successful salesperson. At the end of your sales pitch, you should have answered all the prospect’s questions and overcome their objections. At this point, you should be able to easily segue into asking them to close the sale. If you’ve crafted your pitch correctly, you should have built up their confidence in this decision and showcased that you sure it’s the right choice for them.

8. Follow up on prospects

Sometimes, no matter how great you make your sales pitch, it ends with rejection. Or your prospect may require more time to think about their decision. In these cases, you should consistently follow up on them.

Don’t be too pushy as that could be annoying. Instead, try to set predetermined follow up calls or meetings. Or you could regularly schedule a follow up call with enough time between them to avoid being irritating. Following up on prospects can ensure you secure a sale long after you made your sales pitch.

Your sales pitch needs to be effective and appealing enough that you can meet prospects and ensure you walk away with a sale. This is the only way to achieve success for your entrepreneurial ventures.

How To Give A Successful Sales Pitch

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Sales Pitch| How To Give A Successful Sales PitchNeed help delivering a sales pitch? Sales is very much an art and relies on having a good understanding of how to influence and persuade people. Here are just a few tips that could help you to improve your sales skills and deliver a more engaging pitch that gets buyers interested.

Identify the need for your product

If people have no need for a product, they won’t buy it. This doesn’t have to always be a practical need – people drink soft drinks because they taste good and people play video games because they want to have fun. The best way to identify a need is to identify a problem in the current market and then explain how your product solves this problem. By emphasising the negative impact of the problem and the positive impact of your product’s solution, it can make your buyers believe that this is a product that they need in their life.

Be enthusiastic

In order for your product to come across as exciting, you need to show this excitement. Don’t let nerves make you come across as agitated – almost everyone gets nervous during an important sales pitch, however most professionals learn to turn this nervous energy into enthusiasm. Smiling, using your voice creatively and using arm gestures can help to show enthusiasm. Obviously, you don’t want to go over the top as this could annoy people – practicing in front of a mirror and in front of close friends/colleagues can help you fine-tune this.

Use facts and figures

Facts and figures build trust. Try to use data gathered from your own studies and from other people’s studies to support the need for your product. Some people have a hard time memorising statistics – if you’re one of these people, take some notes with you that you can refer to. Always reference sources when using these facts and figures so that people know you haven’t just made them up.

Tell a story

Appealing to people’s emotions is just as important as using hard stats (if not more important). The most effective way to do this is to recount real life stories. This could be a story of someone that has lost out due to not having your product or a story of someone that has been successful because of your product. Personal stories can also make your more relatable and could be worth throwing in, especially if you aren’t just a sales rep but also inventor of the product. Try to keep these stories genuine and learn to use humour and tragedy tastefully.

Make use of visuals

A lot of us also respond well to visuals. If you’re giving a presentation using slides, make sure that it’s not all text – use this as a chance to use memorable images and infographics. You could even add in some flashy modern technology such as 3D visuals if you’re trying to sell property or gain investment in a development project. When using images, try to be creative and don’t just use generic stock images that offer no added meaning. Instead, use visuals to emphasise metaphors and idioms (this can help to make descriptions of complex and abstract concepts more entertaining).

Learn to read your audience

There’s sometimes no way of predicting the types of people you’re going to be selling to. By learning to read your audience you can alter your pitch slightly to cater to them. If you can tell people are getting bored by the technical stuff, try to hurry through this and spend more time connecting on a personal level. If you think your audience are more interested in the figures, make this the focus of your pitch. You may be able to do some research into your audience beforehand on some occasions which could help you to determine their familiarity with your product and the likeliness of them buying it, allowing you to then alter your pitch so that you’re not coming across too descriptive or too forceful.

Do your homework

Knowledge is truly power in sales. After your pitch, your audience is likely going to want to ask questions and you need to know the answers. It may be impossible to prepare for every question, but you should try to do as much research as possible. The most important information can go into your pitch whilst the less important information should be memorised for potential use after (don’t try to pack all information into your pitch as you don’t want to overwhelm people and if anything your audience will want to ask more questions in order to reiterate information).