How to improve your sales pitch

Making a sale isn’t as simple as having a good product. Even if your business has an excellent reputation, you might still need to convince customers to buy from you. In these cases, you need a sales pitch that’s engaging and memorable, so that it can persuade customers to make a purchase with your company.

This article will provide advice on how to improve your sales pitch to increase your sales and help your company succeed. We’ll look at a few different sales pitch tips, including: 

• Do your research
• Focus on customers’ needs
• Emphasise previous successes
• Be brief but comprehensive
• Make a good impression

Before your sales pitch even begins, make sure you learn as much as you can about the customer you’ll be presenting to. Depending on what information you dig up, you may have to seriously alter your usual sales pitch strategy.

For instance, say that you sell software, and you’re trying to sell a particular type of financial management software to an organisation. During your research, you might find out that the organisation’s website has a few issues that another software product you offer can fix. 

While you initially planned to only sell the financial software, you might be able to sell multiple products instead. Of course, this will require you to change your sales pitch, but you now stand to make much more money as it might be a larger sale than you expected.

As well as researching the customer, it’s wise to look into any topics that might affect the sales pitch. For example, say that the client has previously met with one of your competitors. To take advantage of this, you might want to research your competition so you can find out what features of your goods make them better than your competitors. Then, during the sales pitch, mention these features to try and emphasise the superiority of your product. 

Finally, remember to research your own product, even if you consider yourself an expert. Potential customers are likely to ask questions during your pitch, and you should be able to tell them whatever they need to know about the goods they’re going to buy.

Identifying what a customer wants or needs from your product is vital if you’re trying to improve your sales pitch. If a customer doesn’t need your product, they’re not going to buy it. So try to uncover the needs of a potential customer during your research, then use your sales pitch to describe how your product fulfils those needs. 

You might even be able to find out a potential customer’s needs and wants during your sales pitch. To do this, ask them what problems their company is facing. It may be that your product can solve these problems, and if so, bring up the different ways it can do this.

Remember that different organisations have different needs: for instance, the needs of small businesses are different from the needs of a large company. What you learn for one sales pitch might not work for the next, so try to adjust your sales pitch to address each new customers’ needs.

While the priority is fulfilling the needs of the people at your sales pitch, a good way of showing off your product’s benefits is to talk about how it has fulfilled the requirements of your previous customers. By promoting your previous successes, you can reinforce the idea that you’re running a reliable and trustworthy operation.

Another important reason to promote your business during a sales pitch is that even if the people who attend the presentation don’t buy, they may tell their friends and contacts about your business. If the previous successes of your company impress them, they might contact you about your products. In this way, you can improve your company’s reputation and increase sales even if the initial pitch was unsuccessful. 

Most of the preparations we’ve discussed are business-related, but one of the smartest preparations you can make is simply remembering your manners. A meeting is a social interaction and a business interaction, so you should prepare for the social side as much as the business side.

Your appearance is also a key part of making a good impression on potential customers. It’s not always necessary to dress formally, but appearing well-groomed and professional is essential. Even if it’s someone who purchases your products frequently, don’t dress too comfortably when you meet with them. This can imply that you don’t take their company or the business relationship you share with them seriously.  

After the sales pitch, it’s always nice to send the client a polite and professional business email to thank them for attending. Try to do this even when the sales pitch doesn’t work and you don’t make a sale. As part of your preparations, you might want to create a template for this thank-you email, but remember to customise it after the sales pitch with details of what you discussed so that it’s more personalised.

If you’re successful in your efforts to improve your sales pitch, you’ll likely notice an increase in the number of sales you make. More sales mean more income, which in turn means you might need to put more time into your financial management. 

This is the reason why thousands of entrepreneurs across the UK are using the Countingup app. It is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Find out more and get started with three months free here.