Key Tips for an Effective Sales Pitch

It can be daunting when preparing an important business sales pitch, however, we have compiled a few key sales pitch tips to help you on your way. Look through this guide to ensure you are fully prepared for your next sales pitch and can close the deal. At My Product Roadmap, we offer a range of pitch deck templates to assist your presentation. 

Do Your Research

This is arguably the most important and initial step in producing an effective sales pitch. “Doing your homework” is essential to providing you with the necessary background knowledge on a range of factors that all impact a business deal, negotiation or task. Therefore, taking the time to research and investigate both your customer and your product/service alike so you can be prepared for any possible questions. 

Understand their Needs

One of the most important steps in an effective sales pitch is to truly understand your customer including what they want and need along with their current situation. This can be separated into two sections:

Ask Questions

This is an incredibly useful tool throughout a sales process and it allows you to understand your customer successfully. Many people can get carried away with the term ‘pitching’ and often dominate the conversation with a one-way exchange. In reality, this should be two-way communication and more conversational in order to allow for a more natural and more productive sales pitch. 

Locate the Pain

This is the key to ensuring a sale, you need to discover what the pain is for the customer and then most importantly how you can alleviate it with your product or service to ultimately make life better for them. Once you have located the pain, you need to delve further into how and why the pain affects them. Then you can introduce your product or service and outline how it can help. This step is important in developing a need and desire for the customer for your product or service. 

Presentation Tips

In the majority of sales pitches, there will be a presentation involved and these can often be a make or break point. At My Product Roadmap, we offer a range of pitch deck templates that can be the foundation of your presentation deck. In order to ensure you are using the presentation in the best possible way, see some of our tips:

Be Concise

No one enjoys death by PowerPoint and this can be all too real in many cases when people are presenting. Some common pitfalls include too much text on the slides and simply reading off the slides - your customer can read! One of the best tips to ensure this throughout your presentation is to have three points on each slide which you can then further explain and outline in order to keep the audience interested. 

Include Interaction

By getting your customer involved in the presentation it can keep them interested. This can be done in a number of different ways from offering tasters/samples and prototype products for them to try out and see for themselves. Letting the product speak for itself is a really effective way to convince the customer that they need your product, as all the talk in the world cannot fully explain the user experience. Another way the audience can get involved is through having a conversational approach rather than lecturing to them. 

Use Statistics

Facts and statistics can be overwhelming, but used correctly can be a good foundation of evidence to support your claims. Be sparing with these throughout the pitch and ensure they are true and help back up the points you are outlining, such as this machine will increase production efficiency by x%. As you can spout all the advantages and amazing things that you can offer and these can easily be exaggerated, but facts don’t lie. 

Honesty is the Best Policy

When it comes to promises and guarantees this can be a spot where sales pitches fall apart due to over-promising and guaranteeing outcomes for your client, when this is not possible. Ensure you are being truthful and not over-promising or overstating your product or service to the customer as not only is it unlikely that you will fail to meet these sky-high expectations but the majority of people can see through this blatant “sales talk”. 

Confirming Next Steps

It is vital to ensure at the end of the pitch that you agree on what the necessary next steps should be in order to get the ball rolling whether this is from organising and setting a date for another meeting or signing on the dotted line. Conclude the pitch with clear actions for both sides and leave nothing unanswered. 

How My Product Roadmap Can Help

At My Product Roadmap, we offer a wide range of professional presentation templates including pitch deck templates to offer professional solutions to pitch your products and services to customers, investors or internal stakeholders. Our pitch decks are visually focused to ensure they are assisting your presentation rather than covered in overwhelming information. By using one of our pitch deck templates, you can ensure you are providing a well-structured, professional presentation with the appropriate visual aids.