When you hear someone say ‘sales pitch’ what is it that you think of? A bad sales pitch, right!

Wikipedia says “A selling technique, a sales presentation or sales pitch is a line of talk that attempts to persuade someone or something, with a planned sales presentation strategy of a product or service designed to initiate and close a sale of the product or service.A sales pitch is mostly designed to be either an introduction of a product or service to an audience who knows nothing about it or a descriptive expansion of a product or service that an audience has already expressed an interest. Sales professionals prepare and give a sales pitch, which can be either formal or informal, and might be delivered in any number of ways.”

There are so many things in this ‘meaning’ that make our blood curdle. Here are some of these words/phrases ‘attempts to persuade’, ‘close a sale’, ‘sales professionals prepare and give a sales pitch’. Below are some of the most common sales pitches you’ll ever hear and are guaranteed to keep your customers from hearing more of it ever:

1. “Here at ‘abc company’ we supply companies like yours in ‘xyz product’ which will help you to ‘abc’ more effectively” – this is especially true when your product and benefit is assumed to match the clients’ goals.
2. “I’m sure you’re wanting to know more about xyz, because I saw you searching it on our website” – again, the assumptions are not right, and the fact that you’re using analytics to find a client referral
3. “…and not only that, I’ll throw in a (insert another product or service) and if you sign today I’ll also give you (another product or service)” – this completely undervalues your product or service. This is completely different to value adding.

If you’ve been around the industry long enough, you’ve probably learned many techniques in how to conduct a sales call, which covers many aspects of the Sales Cycle. Maybe in more recent times, you’ve come to concentrate more on the customer, and know where the customer might be in the Buyers Cycle. You may have learned how to give a statement (and we like this) which positions your product or service in a ‘probable’ required state for the customer to be keen to hear some more. But one thing is for sure. A good old fashioned sales pitch which is like the ones you might see on Infomercials, or during daytime television, is something that you won’t learn in any of our sessions, ever. One thing is for sure; you will annoy the customer so much that you’ll be guaranteed never to hear from them again. We see this regularly when we are working with our clients, we ask for a list of customers that they’ve worked with in the past, to see if there are opportunities to open conversation with them again, and we are informed – “oh no, they never want to hear from us again”, they ran for the hills, screaming.

Your customers have become savvier about your sales process, they are wiser at negotiations and are open to understanding the techniques used to trick them that have been used on them in the past. They know their power nowadays in the process and find out when someone is trying just to close a sale, rather than be a consultant in the process. You need to alter your sales process to the customer because the good old ‘sales pitch’ won’t work anymore. You need to understand the sales etiquette and its place in business today.

We pride ourselves on defining a process that we offer our clients to help them secure more business from their customers, our process is up-to-date with today’s needs and wants of your clients and business alike. Talk to us now to find out how we can help your business gain more profitable business from your customers.