Last weekend at the Key Person of Influence Conference in Melbourne I was fortunate enough to meet Ian Elliot – he is Australia’s #1 pitch man, and boy…he sure knows his stuff.
Ian ran the biggest advertising agency in Australia, George Patterson Bates, for many years and he is the author of, Stop Bitching, Start Pitching – the 9 success steps to winning business. Ian shared some of his best ideas for pitching and I will share some of these with you in the coming weeks.
One of the first points that really resonated with me was when Ian Elliot stated that most sales people, or people pitching their business, get it wrong from the minute they open their mouth. Their “pitch” generally consists of a boring, monotone rendition of their company brochure or website – in other words, they make it all about them instead of being all about the customer.
Any sales pitch should be about the customer – not about the business trying to do the selling. This means starting off by asking questions and collecting information that will give you the information you need to make a positive and integral recommendation to the customer.
How often do you get asked intelligent, probing, specific questions from a sales person? I can only remember three times in the past four years.
Many years ago when I started selling I remember having the concept that the sales pitch is all about the customer drilled into me by my sales mentors. But like many people, when I got nervous I pressed “play” and started spouting a pile of facts and figures about the company I worked for.
I started to get exceptional sales results when I overcame my nerves and mastered the art of asking questions and asking good questions of all of my sales prospects. In fact, I would spend 80% of my meeting time asking questions and 10% of my time recommending a product or service and the final 10% of my time signing-up the customer. The more you do it, the better you will get at it.
So, the moral of this week’s BUSINESS BULLET is to ask better questions, long before you start to tell the customer about your products or your business. The questions you ask need to give you answers to the following:
What does the customer actually need (or think they need)?
Find out why they need it (this tells you a lot).
Ask them when they need it by (and can you meet this expectation).
Ask about their journey so far (are they talking to anyone else, are they frustrated etc).
Ask them why they came to you(this should always be asked).
Anyone who masters the art of pitching will never be short of customers. Learning to ask better questions is a great place to start. Watch this space in the coming weeks for some great advice on how to improve your pitching and increase sales and revenue for your business.
Cheers for now,
Andrew
PS For more information about Ian Elliot check out this You Tube Clip – VIEW HERE
PPS Only three more spaces left in my Professional Presenters Bootcamp for next Thursday in Cairns – BOOK HERE
Leave a Reply