Making your sales pitch effective!

Sales people often do not have the discipline to sit down and create their sales pitch, make a script of it, and then rehearse it till they get it right. Many successful sales professionals have told me that they have improved once they began conscious work on their sales pitch.

Here is one important test to run when creating an impactful sales pitch. It involves asking the question "So?" While preparing your sales pitch, keep checking it by implementing the “So?” test.

Every time you say something about your product or your company, if the customer can raise the question 'So?', it kills your pitch instantly. This test also helps to differentiate the features, and the benefits, of your products. If you go ranting about your product features, and the customer says "So?", you need to immediately shift gears… here you have to say 'What this means for you is…' and then follow it up by mentioning the corresponding benefit(s).

Let’s take an example, if someone is selling a wonderful bike that has the latest ABC technology which saves fuel, the sales person can say here is ABC and it is the newest technology and the customer says 'So what?'. Immediately, the sales person highlights the amount of money the customer can save by saying "Sir, let me present you this bike that has the latest in ABC technology… what this means to you is that it would save you at least x dollars every month.”

Speaking the customers' language is the core to successful selling and by using well articulated benefits statements you can be a Best Seller.

Sales people - don't miss these basics!

There are a few things in sales which we cannot afford to ignore. Through the years, I’ve found three absolutely golden rules about sales, and selling, for just about anybody. These are:

• Have conviction in what you sell. That can happen only if you believe in your product / service, and the company.

• It’s all about transferring the conviction. The key step to this is to ask relevant questions and to listen attentively. It’s like 10% talking, and 90% listening. Listen actively, and very carefully to the other person, and be sure you understand what they want and need. Understand their unstated motives. Don’t sit and wait for them to shut up so you can start your pitch again. Figure out whether what you’re selling can help, and how. We all know that people choose on logic, but buy on emotions. Ensure that you decipher the emotion at play.

• In case what you’re selling can’t solve the problem, recognize that. Don’t fool yourself - say so. That certainly will enhance your credibility, so that maybe you’ll get another opportunity later on… and, you have nothing to lose, because selling something that isn’t in the buyer’s interest, is just a future business problem waiting to happen.