Have you ever been talking with a salesperson and not been completely impressed with their sales pitch? In this blog post and video, we will break down why it is very common for salespeople to not use a great pitch.

 

It is How We are Trained

The first thing to point out here is that this is very understandable and that, in most cases, it is not the salesperson’s fault because it is the training that they are provided that leads to them not using a great sales pitch.

If you think about the typical training that a new sales rep will go through when getting hired, it will include some of these main topics or areas of training:

  • Company Info: The salesperson will usually be given some sort of overview of the company, its history, organizational structure, etc.
  • Product Info: The salesperson will be taught all about the products that he or she will be selling.
  • Functionality: New hire training will often go into deep detail about what the products do from a functionality standpoint. The salesperson needs to know what they do and how they work in order to sell them, right?
  • Features: The salesperson will usually learn how the products are sold from features, pricing, and purchasing standpoints.
  • Benefits: Sales and product training should include some details about the benefits that the products or services provided.

That is a rough example of what many new hire programs focus the content on when training new sales hires. Of course, there will be some versions that differ from this or other topics on top of this, but the key point here is that these are some of the main topics that an internal sales training department will focus and this has a big impact on a salesperson’s sales pitch.

 

The problem with this Structure

You may look at that flow of training content and think that it makes sense, and those are all important topics to ingrain in a new salesperson’s head. And while you are correct that these are all important topics, the problem is that these areas are all about us (or all about the salesperson).

You see when you teach a salesperson about the company they work for and the products that they sell, this information is all about the salesperson and the world that they will live in and care about.

The problem with that is that this becomes the foundation of knowledge for the salesperson, and it then becomes what a salesperson goes to and relies on when delivering their sales pitch. And since this foundation of knowledge is “all about me” (or all about the salesperson), it can come off as a bit “salesy” when being delivered to a prospect.

Believe it or not, a sales pitch that makes someone sound like a salesperson can be counterproductive by making them a bit more guarded and sometimes pushing them away.