Here are some quick sales tips for how to start a sales pitch.
How to NOT Start a Sales Pitch
Before we talk about how to start a sales pitch, we want to point out how to NOT start your pitch.
Try to Avoid Sounding Like a Salesperson
Even though you are indeed a salesperson trying to sell something, we feel like you can improve the impression that you start to make with your pitch by not sounding like you are a salesperson trying to sell something. The reason we make this suggestion is that we believe that people don’t enjoy the experience when someone is trying to talk them into something, especially if they are a person that gets approached a lot by different salespeople, like a decision maker at a business.
Minimize the Company and Product Speak
One way to try to decrease how much you look like a salesperson trying to sell something is to minimize how much you talk about your company and products when it comes to how to start a sales pitch.
Try this When You Start Your Pitch
Now, let’s look at a few things that you should do with how to start a sales pitch.
Start with an Elevator Pitch
Try to begin your sales pitch with an elevator pitch. This should be one to two sentences explaining what you do. You may read that and think we contradict ourselves because we just said not to talk about your company and products, yet we just said to share what you do.
We suggest that you create an elevator pitch that focuses more on how you help than on what your products are or do. You can structure your elevator pitch around the benefits that you typically deliver. You can outline the problems you help resolve, minimize, or avoid. You can share an example of another client that you worked with.
Ask Good Questions
One of the best ways to start a sales pitch is to ask the prospect questions. This is another thing that you can do in place of talking about your company and products. When other salespeople start out their pitches by talking all about their company and products, they create this very “all about me” type of conversation.
When you start your pitch by asking good probing sales questions, you not only learn more about the prospect, but you also make the conversation more about them. The answers you get from these questions will help you determine what direction to go with the rest of your sales pitch. You will have a better idea of what portion of your product set fits best and can then focus your pitch more on that. Or you may identify with the answers that you get back that the prospect does not need what you have to offer, and you can move on to looking for a different prospect.
We hope this helps you with how to start a sales pitch.