“That Went By Fast!” and Other Lessons on the Sales Pitch

What’s your sales pitch? I recently led a “Pitch-IT” program at the Arkansas Venture Center for a group of salespeople, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and everyotherpreneurs. The goal was to, in less than 90 minutes, help these (mostly young) business people learn to quickly position their product or idea.

The program was titled “Elements of the Perfect Pitch.” Before getting into the meat of the event—when the participants would draft and practice their own pitches—I shared these tenets:

This is not about perfection, the program title notwithstanding. Your conversation will need regular honing and revising. (I changed the title to “Elements of the (Nearly) Perfect Pitch.”) This is not an elevator pitch, unless you’re the extremely rare person whose conversations occur mostly in elevators.   This is not just an investor spiel. You should build conversation points for potential customers, people in the media, influencers, and networks of family and friends as well. When I asked th ...

Customer Conversation Challenge 5: Coaching

It can be exhilarating to be elevated to the role of “coach.” But that rush can give way to a crash—for the coach, learner, and organization—if the coach doesn’t know what he or she is doing.

When it comes to customer conversations, I find that good coaches are few and far between. Several factors are at play: flat or reduced training budgets, leaner teams (in terms of headcount), and often little understanding of the skills needed to build good messengers. Taken together, that can me ...

Customer Conversation Challenge 3: Complexity

The joke years ago was that the world had become so complicated we were destined for lives with blinking "12:00" on our VCRs. Does anyone believe our world is LESS complex, now that we’re beyond VCRs?

The products and solutions of today are so complicated that they put tremendous pressure on both buyers and sellers. No buyer wants to be stuck with something that won't work--or won't work with the other complex thingies ("legacy infrastructure") that have already absorbed money and time. Sellers, for their part, struggle to escape lingo, acronyms, and technical specs that don't resonate with economic buyers.

The answer probably lies with a picture.

Seth Godin is among the smart marketers who have addressed our "Lizard Brains"--the tiny amygdala that hold us back when confronted with threats, new stimuli, and other complex stuff. For me, the compelling takeaway is that our Lizard Brains are incapable of processing verbal information.

Can your teams represent your products or services with a simple picture? I don't mean a technical schematic—that’s still too complicated--but rather a visual that can be created in real time during the course of a customer conversation.

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Classic Message: Subliminal Advertising, or Not

(Note: I published this column in 2002 in Arkansas Business. Some incorrect assumptions are unfortunately durable. Just ask Leo.)

Pardon me — do you have the time? If your watch is showing a time other than 10:10, then you're obviously not living in the world according to magazine and newspaper advertising.

The vast majority of print ads for watches and clocks show the time as 10:10 or something close to it. Why? Legend has it that someone in the business, some time ago, believed that at 10:10, the hands on a clock made a kind of smiley face — and that this smiley face subliminally would encourage consumers to be so happy that they would want to purchase said advertised watch or clock. (I guess 8:20 would conjure up Mister Frowny Face.) The practice is so embedded within the industry that even ads for digital watches and clocks (which can neither smile nor frown) generally show the time as 10:10.

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Customer Conversation Challenge 2: Consistency

“The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”

"We just aren't on the same page."
"It seems like everyone is just rolling their own."
"Why can't we all sing from the same hymnal when we're out with customers?"

If you hear these phrases around your organization--or even catch yourself saying them--then there is ample evidence of inconsistency in your customer conversations. It’s common to have disconnections among units (Marketing, Sales, Service), geographies, product/service lines, or what potential customers hear online versus offline. I think that evolving work patterns, where more is happening virtually and teams rarely are in the same space at the same time, exacerbate the gaps. So have pressures on training and onboarding budgets.

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Customer Conversation Challenge 1: Comfort

La-Z-Boy sells a lot of recliners. Some of those are, um, aesthetically challenged. Need we more evidence that people like to be comfortable?

I see marketing and sales as a recurring cycle of "de-comforting" and "re-comforting."

If you're on the hunt for new customers, then your biggest hurdle is likely getting that prospect to feel uncomfortable enough with their status quo to seriously consider a change. Sometimes the impetus for change makes itself obvious to an executive--disruptive technologies, new competition, regulatory mandates--but often the marketer must make the case for change. That means helping the prospect see their current situation differently through insights, fresh ideas, and examples. Then you'll need your prospect to feel most comfortable with you as providing the best path to resolving the problem(s).

If you're focused on retention and expansion rather than new business, then you still need to master de-comforting as well as re-comforting...unless you are somehow sure competitors would never, ever try to make the case for change with your customers. ...

Sales has to make the Top 101, right?

I went through 101 Things I Learned in Business School, a hardcover business bestseller by Michael W. Preis and Matthew Frederick. It’s an easy and interesting read, with 101 single-page notes ranging from definitions (a stock indicates ownership; a bond is an I.O.U.) to tips (a manager usually should have no more than six to eight workers reporting to him or her) to pithy quotes (Not to decide is to decide, by Harvey Cox). 

The authors say their book ‘seeks to present lessons in the areas of business that are most likely to be useful to you.’ But, if the often-quoted maxim (nothing happens until somebody sells something) is true, then why is it that none of these supposedly 101 top lessons directly addresses how to sell something? 

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How to Market Change

Almost every element of my work these days involves helping clients anticipate changes, adapt to them, and especially to implement change across customer-facing teams. Here’s what I see working. 

As one example, through my affiliation with DSG I have been helping a Fortune 500 client to better communicate internally about new-product launches. Many of these new products represent substantially different types of solutions or pricing models for the team. How can you best get an organization to transform its messaging for the long term?  

This client follows the change-management model popularized by Harvard Business School professor John Kotter. Kotter’s model has eight stages:

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Change Needs Marketing

In “Take It From an ex-Journalist: Adapt or Die,” a recent opinion piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Byron P. White has a strong message for administrators and faculty members about change. 

When I was a university professor, I appreciated the predictable cycles and traditions on campus. But having served as a marketing consultant to a few schools and universities, and having heard from numerous administrators at conferences and events, I also realize the severe difficulties that many institutions have in trying to transform themselves. 

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When to stop surveying customers

When was the last time your team learned something really valuable from a customer-satisfaction survey program? 

Having had research experience on both the academic and private-sector sides, I try to pay attention to those customer-satisfaction surveys in the marketplace. From what I’m seeing, many organizations need to reconsider what they are doing.  

Just as there really is such a thing as bad publicity, and just as you actually can over-communicate, it is indeed possible to have too much information coming from your customers (if that information is devoid of meaning). 

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