How to Create a Winning Sales Pitch by Solving Instead of Selling
“Wow. When you think about it that way, we really are solving problems for our clients.”
That’s a comment from a training I delivered recently. I was working with a team that had developed a new platform and wanted to pitch it successfully to prospective customers.
I asked them to tell me about the product. They did their best to sell it to me and spoke in detail about its technical elements. But they’d completely forgotten about their end-user - the person they wanted to buy it.
Their sales presentation was focused on all the different features of the product, showing exactly what it could do and how it would integrate into other elements. And that’s definitely useful information for their prospective buyers.
But in a sales situation, your would-be customer ultimately has one question:
“What’s in it for me?”
Focus less on the features and more on the benefits
I wrote a blog post recently about how successful sales conversations are about asking effective questions and actively listening to the answers.
And that is your key to selling without being “salesy.”
To help my training group see things from another perspective, I started asking questions about their product so we could tease out the benefits for the buyer.
These questions are a framework you can apply to any product or service to help you get into your potential customers’ heads and understand why they might buy what you’re offering.
What’s life currently like for your potential customer? What challenges are they facing that your product or service can solve for them?
How will your offering change things for them? What will be easier as a result of buying it?
What will their life look like afterwards? What transformation will your product or service help them achieve?
The answers will give you a true sense of what your customer is dealing with, so you can draw out and illustrate how your product or service could change things for them.
A sales pitch that’s a solution rather than a hard sell.
As my group went through the process and expanded on the answers to those questions, I could almost see the pennies dropping.
They suddenly realised this wasn’t just a cool platform with all these varied features and functionality. This was something that could make their clients’ lives easier.
Once we established that, the sales pitch fell into place so easily. They weren’t trying to “sell” the platform anymore. Instead, they were offering a valuable solution to a problem that their customers were struggling with.
They’d stopped talking about “omnichannel engagement” and “multifunctional integration.”
Now they were highlighting the fact that their product allowed their prospects to:
“Concentrate on serving customers instead of fighting with their back-end tech.”
and
“Reduce the number of weekly support tickets by 27%.”
They had flipped their thinking to take the focus off the product and all its fancy features and onto their audience.
And suddenly, they had a much more persuasive argument for their customers to choose their platform.
They’re not buying your product. They’re buying a solution.
If you’re just listing off product details and technical specs, or talking about the nuts and bolts of how your service is delivered, your audience will find it hard to make the connection between their current reality and the improved version that your product could give them.
Getting to the root of their specific challenges and hearing how they describe them will allow you to paint a vivid picture of how their lives or business will be transformed thanks to what you offer.
How can your product or service be the answer to your customers’ problems?
When you’ve answered that question, then you can start thinking about what you want your prospects to know about your offering and how you can bridge the gap between their needs and your solution.
Recommended Reading: Here’s a really handy list of 101 Features vs. Benefits to help you to figure out which is which.
Knowing your audience is the key to successful sales
Every sales conversation comes back to the same fundamental principle - know your audience.
Who are they?
What challenges are they facing?
How does your solution fit into that?
And if you can answer those questions, you’ll be much more confident when it’s time to deliver your sales pitch. Because then it’s not about pressured sales tactics or “convincing them” to buy. Instead, you’re thinking about where they’re coming from and how your offering can change the game for them.
It also boosts your potential customer’s level of trust and confidence in you. Because now they feel you’re invested in understanding them enough to know if you have the right answer rather than just pushing a product on them that might not be a fit.
Why does it matter to them?
That’s the question that makes all the difference when it comes to successful sales.
If you need help creating a polished and professional sales pitch (without the hard sell), then let’s chat. You can book a complimentary intro call with me here to find out more.
Hi!
I'm Maureen McCowen and I work with individuals and teams to help them unlock their speaking confidence.
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