A couple of months ago, I attended a conference for sales leaders in Las Vegas, and it was like a trip back in time. One of the main topics – both in terms of the speakers on the stage and on the lips of some of the executives, was, “How to refine your sales pitch.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about polishing your sales SKILLS – but in this day and age, I think that a highly rehearsed and refined “sales pitch” is about the bottom of the list for the skills to practice.
You see, a refined sales pitch is all about YOU. You are the star of the show in the “refine your sales pitch” world, because the concept is that you’re going to dazzle the customer with your one-size-fits-all brilliance while the customer sits rapt, hanging on every well-rehearsed word. I’m shocked that I even have to write this in 2024, but sales just doesn’t work that way anymore. Sales today is all about helping your customers navigate the Buyer’s Journey, and the buyer is the star of that show – not the salesperson. With that said, there are definitely sales presentation skills that you can and should polish, and we’ll dive into those skills now.
Listening: Wait, what? I promised that I was going to talk about sales presentation skills, and I’m opening with listening. Presenting is about speaking, isn’t it? Well, it is – but the content of your presentation should depend on the individual Buyer and what they have expressed as their dissatisfaction, their Motivation, and their definition of success. If you aren’t asking the right questions, and capturing the right information from them, your presentation will miss the mark.
The best way I’ve found to help salespeople actively listen to their customers is to train them to have a prewritten list of questions that they plan to ask. I usually start with a boilerplate list of questions, and then add to it based on my prospect research. And yes, after 30+ years in selling, and I have no idea how many thousands of sales calls, I still have a written set of questions. I do this because, if I have my game plan for what I’m going to ask next, my mind isn’t trying to figure that out while the customer is talking. Instead, I can devote my mental energies to capturing what they are saying. The biggest reason that salespeople don’t listen is that they’re trying to figure out what to say next. Don’t be that guy or gal. Have your game plan together before the call starts.
Correlation: The sales skill that I refer to as “correlation” is the ability to hear a customer express a need and immediately match (or correlate) that to a product or service solution. That’s where you truly become an expertise provider and not a peddler of products or services. This requires mental agility, but it’s also something that can be taught. A great sales meeting exercise is the old flash-card method. Have each salespeople write their customers’ ten most common needs. Then, remove the duplicates and put each need on a flash card. One person flashes the card, and the others quickly state the solution. This can be done one-on-one or as a group in sales meetings, but it’s a great exercise for learning how to quickly build your “mental slide deck” presentation. The more you can present without having to go back to the bat-cave (and, your customer assumes, draw on the expertise of others), the more credible you become.
Enthusiasm: Yes, enthusiasm is something that you should practice and employ. There’s an old saying in sales: “If you can’t get excited about what you’re selling, your customer can’t, either.” One reason I’m not teaching you how to refine your sales pitch is that a highly refined sales pitch works against your own enthusiasm. I’ve been the customer in sales calls where the salesperson had obviously refined his pitch so much that he was delivering it robotically, with no excitement or enthusiasm whatsoever. Instead, practice (with others or in front of a video camera) delivering parts of your mental slide deck with enthusiasm and passion. Don’t feel like you have to fake enthusiasm in someone else’s language and words; instead, make it authentically you.
Sales isn’t about refined pitches now. It was once; I’ll fully concede that. If today’s customer wants to hear the refined boilerplate about your company and your stuff, they’ll read it on your website. In fact, they’ve probably already done so as the part of their independent execution of their Buyer’s Journey. They’re talking to you because you can offer something that impersonal Internet research can’t – so give it to them. Listen to them, correlate their needs with the right solution, and do so enthusiastically, and you’ll go farther than all the salespeople who have learned how to refine their sales pitch.
