Positioning the Pitch

Too often, sales people sell based on raw advantages of their product or service without qualifying the reason for their presentation. A detailed explanation may be accurate and may have merit but what this kind of selling lacks is a point. The first few moments of a pitch should directly address the reason for consideration and should be used to apply your product or service to the clients business. In other words, it should be about your client and not your company. You must face facts and realize that nobody cares about your business nearly as much as they do their own. Understanding this very simple premise is paramount to your success. If a client sees your company in the context of your market, you have lost them. Helping them see your company in the context of their market not only keeps them interested but also puts the entire pitch in a context that they can understand.  Start with the premise that you are there to make them more successful or that you are there to make their jobs easier. Whatever the case may be, you must position things in terms that they are familiar with; their terms. Let me fill you in on a little secret; nobody cares how great you are or how successful you have been in the past. If you don’t directly address the challenges facing your client they will show you the door and wonder what the hell you were talking about. Let me illustrate this using Defiant’s own sales process.

When our reps meet with clients, their first job is to gain an understanding of the market they are selling to. In other words, my reps do their homework. Walking in with a handful of testimonials and pictures of past projects only serves to prove that we are a company. That’s it! What every CEO understands is that past performance does not guarantee future results!!! Also, just about every executive thinks that their industry is unique and requires “special” consideration. Explaining how great you were last month means far less than a detailed account of how you fit into their picture right now. Once our reps have done industry based analytics, we begin to form a picture of the trends and dynamics that directly impact our client. Knowing what they face allows us to understand what they need to do in order to meet these specific challenges. That combined with getting their perspective makes for a powerful tool.  We spend the majority of our time with prospective clients in a conversational format. Engaging them shows that we are interested in meeting their challenges and not in applying past sales models we have used. We do this even when we know what they need to do and even when the solution that will work for them is obvious to us. This level of engagement helps to ease the tensions for our clients and also allows us to ensure that our analysis is correct. Putting together a “canned” pitch in a power point format for example, only serves to lecture clients. Again, nobody cares how great you think you are or successful you have been in the past!

No matter what kind of product or service you sell, it must make sense to the buyer if you are going to be successful. Learn how your product affects your target whether you are selling to a business or a consumer. Once you understand what matters to them you must mirror those concerns and address them in the context of their dynamic. Phrasing the same statements in the context that is relevant to the buyer will have a substantial impact. After all, how do you make buying decisions?