It is fair to say that 2016 has been a politically tumultuous year – the EU referendum, a Conservative leadership election, a Labour leadership re-election and then finally the turmoil that has been being raging in America with Trump winning the Clinton v Trump Presidential Election.
All the candidates have been selling us their big story or setting out their stall as to why they should be leader. This got me thinking about how businesses present their story when selling, what makes a good sales pitch and is there anything we can learn from all the politician’s sales pitches this year?
5 Top Tips for delivering your sales pitch with impact:
It is vital that you know what your core sales message is – what is the most important fact or message that you want to convey to your audience.
Understanding how to relate to your customer and knowing what issues are important to the audience you are selling to is vital when delivering your sales pitch.
We have all been in the position of listening to a boring speaker. In order that you deliver your sales pitch with impact you need to spend as much time practicing how you speak and how you look as well as working on what you are going to say. People will remember the whole package not just what you say!
Delivering your sales pitch with confidence is also vital to winning over your audience. People are more likely to buy into a pitch that is delivered with confidence compared to one where the speaker doesn’t sound as though they believe in what they are selling.
Prove to your customer that you can deliver and have the credentials to provide an excellent solution for their problem.
As we have all experienced 2016 has provided us with two political sales stories where the results were completely unexpected and where my Top Tips 1-4 seemed to completely outweigh the requirement for proof!
Trump’s key sales message was to Make America Great Again and as much as you don’t want to believe it he obviously did strike a chord with swathe of Americans who felt disconnected to the current situation and believed his story that America was broken. This also goes for the 52% of Leave voters in the EU Referendum who despite a lack of economic evidence, during the EU referendum process, believed the message that the UK would be better off out of the EU and that we need to control our borders – i.e. Let’s make Britain great again! These key messages clearly resonated with the majority of the UK and US population.
Three key players in both the UK and US political scene – Trump, Boris Johnson and even Farage, whatever you think of them as individuals, are crowd rousing orators with a strong and engaging tone and formidable body language so that when they speak they manage to portray a key message. They also all have utter confidence in themselves their stories and their beliefs and so made a strong argument for Brexit and in the US Election. Trump even managed to persuade the people of the USA to vote for a presidential candidate with absolutely NO experience of politics!
Despite the evidence above, I would strongly advocate that when you are developing a sales pitch for your business that you still work hard to prove to your customer how your product or service can be of real benefit to them. You can use testimonials, case studies, product sales figures, length of time in business to convince your prospective customers why you would be worth investing in. However, as the politics of 2016 have proved it’s not the only thing you should rely on! Make sure you are confident, think about whether your key messages and story will resonate with your audience and work on the delivery because as the political scene of 2016 has shown us it is not all about proof!
To ensure you Make the Leap with your Sales Pitch and win the vote of your customer’s, email Joanna@leapfrogcompany.com to book a Sales Pitch Workshop. All bookings made before December 20th will receive a 10% discount if you mention this blog.
