Transcripts
1. Class introduction: Hello, We're back again with another class in the series of the basics of the sale cycle. Now, today's class
is going to be stepping it up a
little bit onto what most people we want to focus on when thinking about the different steps
of the cell cycle. So to start with, let's just remind ourselves
of the sale cycle that I shared within our
first-class on this journey, which was really
just an introduction to what the cell cycle is, the processes involved,
why you use it. What happens if maybe
you don't use it? And one of the key things, and possibly the most
important thing for me is that the cell cycle doesn't necessarily have to
look the same for every single salesperson
out there on the screen. Now, we've got my
extended sale cycle, which I'm just going to I'm just going to have
a look at now. And, um, today we're
gonna be talking about really from approach round
to differentiate there. We've covered off prospects and researcher and stakeholders. All of that is going to really
play a part in this class. But approach meeting, developing
European opportunity in differentiate is really what we're going to focus on today. A lot of what we'll talk about. We'll also touch on
closing of deals. Because really that is
what you're aiming for as you're moving around this
section of the cell cycle. But I'm going to do
a separate class on closing deals because it's a topic that some people
are a bit nervous about. Some people may think
it's a weak point. And I think actually if
you've done everything right up until the point where you're looking
to close the deal, you should put yourself
in very good stead. So I'm going to focus
on that separately and link back to this class, which will contain a really
substantial amount of content around what
you'll need to do when you've started
to build a relationship, you're looking to put forward a pitch or looking to get
in front of the buyers. And you're looking to
deliver your proposition, which really that in itself is the most important part of
the sale cycle in my opinion, because it isn't quite as simple as people
think it might be. Then again, as I said, when we get through
to the next class, when we're looking at
close, we're going to touch back on everything
we talk on today. Because I want you
to go away and do a project which I'll discuss at the end before we
get onto close. So you're kind of on
the same journey, same cycle as ion. So with that, we're
going to move into the first step or the first
part of the class today, which is focusing on your
relationships so far.
2. Is it the right time to pitch?: All being well, you've gone out, you've built a really
strong prospect list which has had a lot of
research put into it. You've identified who
the stakeholders are within the entity
you are looking to sell or looking to pitch to. If you're working in the B2C environment and you're dealing with direct consumers. You've got a list of
prospects and you've got a list of traits
or buying drivers, whether that be common issues
that these people face, whether they be going
to the gym and need up a higher-quality
water bottle through to I haven't a nice car. And any comments? The long and the short of
it is you've got a good, concise, strong set of prospects that you'd
been warming up. You've had them from code. You've reached out
through all the methods that I've spoken about before. Now you're getting meetings
booked in the diary. Now you're going to see these
people that are going out. So looking into the
wants, their eyes, I'm talking about actually the proposition that
you have in hand. Now, the first thing we
think about before we are going out to go and
pitch is, is it time? Because you may have a
strong relationship? What is that
relationship built upon? What have been the drivers of the development of your
relationships so far. Have you been out for dinner with them, how
he'd been out for a drink. Have you had a few
informal coffee is I've got a few
informal chats. If you phone calls, have you really got to
the point where you're sitting there and
you're starting to talk to them about what
really your proposition, your product, your service, what the real benefits. Is it going to bring it to them? In many cases, for
me, I haven't. Well, you always need
to bear in mind is when you're looking
to get what I like to call a formal pitching
opportunity or a slightly more in-depth,
more formal discussion. Is, is it the right time? There's a lot of
things we've spoken about so far in this class is trust, confidence,
understanding. Have you asked the
right questions? Have you given good
enough answers? Now, if your if your prospects, if the
buyers within them, if the decision-making
stakeholders within them do trust you and you've
asked the right questions. And by asking the
right questions, it doesn't necessarily instigate
trust within the buyers, but it does do is it gives you the knowledge that you
require to be able to put together a strong
pitch or a strong cell, which is a bespoke version
of what you already have tailored to their
business, to their needs, whether that be the
problem you're trying to solve for them or the benefits you're trying
to bring their business. So I think I'll just jump down here now so you
can come up with me on this. When we're thinking about, is the relationship ready? There's kinda three things
that I would consider. So the first thing is
the amount of contact. Now I apologize for
my handwriting. Hopefully you can make
notes at the same time. I do. When I say the
amount of contact, have you have one phone call, how you exchanged a one
LinkedIn message at the left, one voicemail if you had
a one or two e-mails. Now, for the buyers,
for the stakeholders, whoever they may be to
get a sense of what you're about and what you're
bringing to the table. It does take a
little bit of time. There is a slight exception for salespeople that are working
for established business. Established
businesses with names that these buyers and
stakeholders would recognize. So just as a very
high-level example, if you were a
banker and you were looking to sell banking services to your local small business, your local
medium-sized business. And you work for the
light to name any names, but some of the top
banks around the world. If you send over an
email or phone call or a LinkedIn message
asking for firstly, the introduction
and then a meeting. You don't need to do quite
as much contextual work in getting the stakeholder
that you're reaching out to, to understand what you're
trying to bring to the table. Because they're going
to know who you are and where you come from. And your email signature, your LinkedIn profile was
good enough to do that. But for the majority of the people that
are watching this, that won't be in that situation. You really need to be
sure that you've got across who you are, where you come from, what you offer, and starting to touch on
why they need it. Now, if you've done that and
you've had enough contact. And when I say enough, the
right kind of contact. And we think about
the next thing, which is, as I'm
sure you've guessed, how is it being received? Now? This doesn't necessarily
mean that you need yes to every single
question you've asked. There will always be
a bit of tooling and throwing when it comes
to any type of cell, no matter the size
of the product, no matter the size
of the service, no matter the dollar or the power and value
that comes with it, there will always be a little
bit of tiling and throwing. It doesn't all have
to be positive. But you need to read, agree to have the stake holder or the buyer you're talking to resonating with what
you're saying a little bit. Do they get it? I get why it might be
necessary for them. And a lot of cases. The reason I say
this is not because you are going to fall down
at the pitching stage. Because in many cases you'll
reach out and you say, Oh, can I come and meet you
to take you through our latest offering of x
or whatever it might be. If they buy real estate
hold it hasn't resonated, hasn't understood,
hasn't acknowledged, hasn't thought about or agreed
with what you said so far. Nine times out of ten,
they're going to say no. Because why would they say yes? If you lived in a
house with no windows and you had a someone
accompany calling, you, asked him to come and
install triple glazing. You're not going
to say yes because you've got no windows, right? So Symposium, I'm
I'm I'm dialing it down here as
much as possible. But how can you expect a buyer or a stakeholder
of a business? These are busy people. How can you expect them
to take time out of their day to talk to you about something that
isn't relevant to them. To be completely
honest, if you've done the first few sections of
the sale cycle thoroughly, this shouldn't happen
because you'd have done the right research
and you'd have identified the
right stakeholders. So let's, let's just take a
second to think about that. Because it's quite
important that you've, your show that what you've said so far has
been received well, because if you asked for
that picture or that proposal meeting
or that slightly more formal meeting too soon, you can burn away a lot of the progress that
you've already made. So yes, you might
be excited yet, you might want to get
in there, but just make sure the timing is right. And thirdly, it's finally, is the timing right? I've just, I've just
finished on that point. Now you might be
thinking, what do you mean if I'm trying
to sell something, if I'm on the road, if I'm looking to deliver
some new business, the time is always right. And you know what?
For my salespeople, The time will always be right? However, for most
prospective clients, the time most certainly
may not be right. Now, just think
about contextually, what's going on in your
prospect's industry? Is it end-of-year is the end of Cold financial
quarter because if you're dealing with small to
medium-sized enterprises, the bar is within
the business will have an active
involvement in all of these different
processes throughout the year which is involved in
managing a business, right? I'm just coming up to the
end of the end of June. It's the end of the first
half of the financial year in the UK or are not financially and new
financial in the US, or if we're six months
into the year from April, I'm gonna not gonna
come out with a month, which is going to
be wrong there for six months on from April. And we're halfway through the
financial year in the UK. And you're reaching
out to a chairman or C over medium to small
sized business that has a small financial team, that chairperson will have
an impact or a role to play in that end of end of
half and half, half meetings. So this sounds very basic, but you must remember a
lot of this comes down to listening to how the information you've shared so far
has been received. If it's been received, well, responses to being quick, even though you feel
like there could be other factors involved or other things to consider in
terms of his atomic right? But up until that
point, if you've had good fast responses, if their responses
have been positive, it probably is the right time. This person might come
back and say, Yeah, let me schedule him
for 34 weeks time. That's fine. If you can push to get it done sooner in the diary sooner. Do. Of course, if it's right for
you and you're prepared. If you're if you're
not prepared enough, give yourself the time that
you need and reach out. And ask, ask for the pitch. These are the three things
that I think about. I've had enough contact. Has the contact being the right contact and has it lead to positive outcomes and
positive messages? And thirdly, is this the
right time to go and pitch? So from there, I'm going
to leave it at that. I have a little think. The next thing we're
going to talk about is, how do you actually
ask to go and pitch? Because it sounds simple, but possibly not as
simple as people think. And I would expect It's
also something that certain people find
somewhat daunting. So we'll leave it at
that for the moment.
3. How to ask for an opportunity to pitch?: The next thing we're
going to start thinking about is how do you ask for
the opportunity to pitch? And as I just mentioned, this sounds very simple. It sounds easy as sending
an email saying, Oh, do you mind if we
pop down on Thursday the 3rd to discuss
her latest offering? But sometimes this
isn't the case. It can be this is
subjective, right? It can be as easy as that. But it necessarily the
right way to do it. My thoughts and feelings
are that no, it's not. There should be a little bit
more thought put into it. If anything, doesn't
necessarily mean you need to completely re-adapt the way that you're asking
for these meetings. But you do need to
think more about how or why you're
asking for them. So over many years I've
been in this situation. I've started to
develop a relationship with a senior figure
within an organization. I would be probably one of the main decision-maker for
the area that I work in. The area that I work in is most like most
significant purchases, sometimes slightly
procurement driven and slightly cycle driven. I'll bear in mind that
that isn't necessarily the case with a lot of other purposes that these
businesses are making. But that's the situation and I've been in many,
many occasions. So asking for the pitch, you've made contact with
the right stakeholder, you've warmed up, that
relationship, might be bad. One or two phone calls, maybe you've had some
e-mail exchanges, maybe you've been out and
seeing them in person. Now, depending on the
nature of the sale, depending on the nature
of the product or service that you're
looking to pitch. You're looking to deliver
your proposition on. You're going to have
to adjust the way that you're working in
the way of you are approaching the cell based on how businesses
purchase what you're offering and also the
Ticket value, right? So put simply, if what
you're what you're offering is something that an organization of
businesses has to put a lot of thought
into the purchase. It's purchased already. Or maybe it's a spend clarity. They are already
have budget for your coming in and you're coming
to them effectively saying, I think I can do a better job than than whoever you're
working with now, Orion coming in and
saying what you're spending your spending this much money, we
don't know what it is. You're spending an amount
of money at the moment. We know you're already purchase this service that I'm offering. Your proposition is that I can do it better or I
can do it cheaper. And cheaper doesn't
necessarily mean better, which we should
always keep in mind. All. It's a product that
they already have. Maybe its fleet
vehicles for example. Or maybe you're you're
selling stationary or, or possibly a food service
or possibly marketing services or possibly social
media marketing of services. It's there should be a budget
allocation for it already. It's a purchase I already make. It's not something you can
knock on the door and say, for £500 a month, I'm gonna come in and I'm
going to clean the windows. Now, this business might
already have window cleaning. £500 a month. Could well be cheaper
than what they pay now. Are you going to get
a yes right there? Right then? Now, in most cases you want a sound simple, It
sounds like you should. But human nature, psychology doesn't let
you work like that. So this kind of shows two
different ends of the spectrum. We've got kind of
sophisticated selling. And then you've got service, a simple service selling a
Service Storage you purchased. Sophisticated selling a
service is already purchased. The slightly gray area
is something new. I've invented. Let's just say a pen
that never runs out. Fantastic. There's company. They buy pens. I don't
know. It depends. I get three pens all the time. You'll come into them
with something better, something different, probably
something more expensive. Now, I've gone off on a
bit of a tangent here. But it's very important
that you start thinking like a buyer. We're asking for a pitch. If you're selling something like a pen that never runs out. Something new, you can,
with this product. You can get it across
over the phone, over remaking, get
across what it is. The benefits to it. The return on investment
for the business. And possibly if
you've got clients, you've got pairs that are of a similar size and
similar nature you probably work how actually the savings at this pen
could drive them as well. If you're coming
in and you want to become the new stationary
supply for the business. Keeping on the same theme here, the big story data
stationary supplier. I have a monthly retainer
with the stationary supply. They buy an array of
stationary from plastic. Plastic mice don't
necessarily stay stationary, but you'd be surprised how
many stationery company. So plastic mice, you're selling pens,
you're selling paper. Things that get
delivered once a month, month after month,
year after year. That is very different. If I'm selling a service with
a contract like that, a contract where they've already got a service provider in place, I will not be able to get a pitch or a meeting
as quickly as I will do trying to sell
this new innovation, this pen, another arms out. So think about that when
you're asking for a pitch. When you're thinking about I
haven't had enough contact. This person trying to sell this monthly stationary supply when this contract and become the number one supply
for this business, you all going to need
a lot more contact than what this person trying to sell this special pennies. Because it's a bigger
decision for the business. Like and roll the dice with
this pen, I'll give it a go. One cost monthly retainer. Very different. Now for me, thinking back to when I spent more
time on the road in sales in what was much more like this service provider
role than it was trying to sell
one funky thing. I would need multiple
phone calls, email chains. I like to really fill
the prospect as warm. I'd like the prospect
really to be itching for me to ask for this
opportunity to pitch. So it comes back to what
I've just been saying prior to this little
section of the class. And this little section
of the class isn't necessarily about
how you're asking, but it's when you're asking and how it fits in
with what the buyer, what the stakeholders mentally
or thinking at the time. But keep bringing it back in, keeping it simple
how you are asking. Please follow everything
that I've said. Don't fall, warm up the prospect, develop
the relationship. Let me show them, share insight, showing that you know what
you're talking about. Show them that you
understand their business. Show them that you
understand what they need. Once you've done this. Asking for a meeting can be
ironically simplest going. It's been it's been great. Getting to know them
right into your business. I'll do listening. Having listened to
what you've said. Having listened to your
peers in the industry, having worked with some of
your peers in your industry. And this can be, it can be transferred to any,
anything really. Because it's all about
understanding your client. If you're in the B2C, Well done, you're working with consumers. Exactly the same thing. You'll be surprised
how many similarities each person has to the next. You understand the peer group. Do you understand why they
want to buy the product? And as soon as you
get that across, it is time to ask for a meeting. And you asked by meeting, by saying these
three kilonewtons. I've been listening to
what you're saying and I really started to
understand the business. Secondly, I've been
talking to your peers. I worked with some
of your peers. It's quite interesting
to see that some of the
challenges or some of the benefits of
what I'm offering transferable from some of
our existing clients to you. We understand your
peers and we understand how this can work for you. And thirdly, this is something
that I think about a lot, funnily enough and
asking for a pitch. And it's what I want
to call it a pitch. Don't want to call it a meeting. Now that's for you to judge at the time with the stakeholder
you're working with. Sometimes calling it a
meeting or catch up. It's not as scary. People say yes to an easier. But if you've called
it a pitch from the beginning and you're
going there, the liver. And then I'm going to say it. I don't like them. In
PowerPoint presentation. There will be an understanding, there will be an expectation that that will
lead to something. Doesn't necessarily
lead something doesn't necessarily
have to leave positive, sorry, that'd be great if it doesn't, that's
obviously the aim. But you'll have a
call to action, you'll have a core point to go back to and say that
we've presented today. Now, what do you think? You're going to give us a shot? So I appreciate that.
That's very, very broad. And we can go into ways to talk about
how to ask for a pitch. But if you've shown
your understanding for their business and shown that you've
listened to them. And you have grasped from what they've said and you'll research that
you've done them. What you have is relevant. Title a message and send it over and asked
for that meeting. I'll leave it at that because
that's quite a lot already. And what we're thinking
about after this point is who you going to pitching to, the nature of the pitch. And that very much ties into
how I've just finished.
4. Who are we pitching to & the type of pitch?: Right? So the next thing we're going to
start talking about is let's think about who were pitching to the
nature of the pitch. So I'm going to keep this bit slightly brief because I think we've touched on already
within the previous classes, especially around
identifying stakeholders. That there's a few things that I'd like to
quickly touch on. Now, I'm going to keep
this very B2B focused because when it comes to
pitching in the B2C environment, there isn't as much
variation in how you pitch. Your message will always be tailored to the individual
you're talking to. When you're thinking
about the type of pitch you're
going to deliver. In the B2C world, the nature of a pitch typically is a lot more
tambien, lot more fire. And it's a lot more about
how you deliver the story rather than how
you adapt yourself to who you're talking to. So keeping on the B2B mindset, topics are for the moment. If we think about
medium-size businesses, it applies to large as well. And in some cases it also
applies to small businesses. The larger you get, the
more people are involved. Sometimes these individual
stakeholders become teams. And sometimes with
the small businesses, these individual stakeholders
merged together. Now, typically, if
you're selling to a medium-sized business or a small to medium-sized
SME enterprise. You'll be dealing with either
commercial executives, management level,
managing director level, the level below the c-suite. So typically in that level, you're dealing with senior
management across the board. Because some of those
senior management senior managers will have
the authority to sign off on purchases and I will have
the authority to allocate budget to the types of things that you'll
be trying to sell. In other cases, you'll be
dealing with the C-suite. And when I say the C-suite
furloughs that I'm sorry, I should have touched
touched on this before. When I say the C-suite
for those that aren't familiar with the term. What we're talking about
here is CEOs, CFOs, CIO, HRD, human
resource directors. Sometimes I sit
within the C-suite. Clo, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer,
Chief Operations Officer. Sometimes in there
you'll also have treasury that general counsel. So we're talking the most senior people
within the business, the people making
the decisions about the future strategy and overall where their
business is going. Sometimes also the
day-to-day decision-making will get escalated to them
for their for their sign-off. But typically that
day-to-day decision-making sits with the group that
I mentioned just before, slightly lower down the
MDs to senior managers below the C-Suite who are really running
the organization. So if you're presenting
to the C-suite, there are a few things
to keep in mind. An odd slightly adapt to when I'm presenting to
that senior level, senior management level below that primarily for one reason, the senior management level, but the sit below
the C-suite will have 80 to 90% of cases. A better understanding of
how the business runs on a day-to-day basis
that will have more interests in the granular information that comes with it. And they will have
more questions, more granular questions
about what you're offering, how it's going to fit
in with the business and how it will benefit
with the business. That C-suite organization
or C-Suite group, sorry. Ceos, CFOs, CFOs sit higher up. If you're pitching to those
types of individuals, you have to remember that these people have
very broad roles, are very busy people, they sit in lots of meetings, are involved in many topics. If you're presenting
a marketing to a CFO who has to sign
off on the budget. And you've come out as you
can out of one meeting with the head of marketing and going into the next
meeting with the CFO. The way you are
pitching is going to have to be very,
very different. And that's quite simply
because I've got such different buying drivers. The CFO, looking at the finance, he sees looking at
the big picture. She's thinking, right, if your product is
going to cost this, it needs to return
this every year. Otherwise it's
relevant and you're going to have to get
that across to her. You got to get across TO while
your product will deliver that return on
investment and why she should be you're interested. If you're thinking about Head of Marketing and you're
talking about marketing. We're talking about deliver a social media marketing offer. Offering. You're going to have to go into that granular level detail
about what you're offering, what it does, why it's better
than what they do already, and how it's going to
work with their business. And also you should
keep in mind that if you're pitching directly
to a department, your product or
services tailored to. A finance offering or trauma to finance if it's Martina,
talk to marketing, if it sounds you're
talking to sales, whatever it may be, supply
chain token to Ops. You've got to remember that
you're offering your product, your service, your solution
has to fit in with them. If you're offering, offering
something which is going to improve the marketing output and you're talking to
the head of marketing, you could be one,
contradicting them. You could be two things
fairly patronising. And three, if you go in
and you're that good, you could do this
person out of a job. And it sounds awful. But in a lot of cases
you'll see these people have sat in the back
of their mind and you're going in there
to replace them. I think the rise
of freelancing as possibly make this
more relevant because it's shown that agencies
and freelancers can do a very good job
and sometimes as good, if not better job than
those people selling house. You've got to
remember that and you got to adapt the way you're talking to these people
for that exact reason. Now, the type of picture
is very, very similar. It's very much linked. I think in most cases, if you're talking
to the C-suite, you're going to be in
a formal presentation. Guys be sitting there
with one of those really, really interesting PowerPoint decks everyone loves to watch. And you're going to
be talking about ROI. I'm gonna be talking about cost. You're gonna be talking
about how long it's going to take for them to make their money back on
investment in you. You're going to be talking about how you're going to adapt and bespoke you're offering
to improve the delivery, the benefits for that business. Now if you're talking
to that level, but it could be a slightly
more casual meeting. And in most cases it's gonna be so much more conversational. You want the other meeting to
be conversational as well. But when you're talking
about more granular topics, you're going to want it to be conversational because
you're going to want to know what that person is thinking about,
what you're saying. Because that's when
the H word comes in. The hurdles word which all these salespeople
love to talk about. How do you overcome hurdles? There isn't necessarily
a right answer to that question because
no hurdle is the same. People that overcome
hurdles the best. The people that
have researched and prospects understand
what they do, why they do it, understand why it works for their clients. And have, above all else listened since day one of talking to the
prospect and made a note, an actually thought about it. And that's that keyframes
active listening. That talks about who
we are pitching to, the nature of the pitch
we're going into. Now, I'm going to leave that there because what
I want to get into now is what is the
key to a good pitch? It's the secret that
I still don't think anyone knows in its full extent. We all have our own personality. We will have our own way
of approaching things. But I think it's, I think it's certainly going to be an interesting section. So for that, I will
leave this there and we will see you
in the next section.
5. What makes a good pitch?: And now we have arrived at
probably the section we're all here for the K to a good pitch. Unlike most of my classes, there isn't an exact
obvious answer because in sales there never is. But I will give you what. My structure is. A structure of a
picture of a cell is very much driven by the person that is
doing this selling. Now you should always adapt to the people you're talking to. Yes, I've said that, yes, it remains very important. But as I've said, from the first-class,
people buy from people. And with that, I'm going
to crack on because I suspect this is going to get
quite interesting on that. What makes a good pitch? Other than a 38
slide PowerPoint? Sarcasm. So what you gonna
want to talk about? What are our first, oh God. What are you going to
want to talk about first? You? Who are you? You're sitting in a room with
a group of stakeholders. More than likely you're only
going to know one of them. And it's the person that you've been developing the relationship with in order to
get this meeting. So now you're in the meeting. The first thing you're
going to want to do is break the ice. Now icebreaker. Icebreakers are challenging. There's no right or
wrong way of doing it. I've seen some actually, I've seen some wrong ways of
doing it, some extreme ways. But it's all for me
about being natural. Setting that one person or maybe you've got a colleague or a selling partner with you sitting in front of
six stakeholders from a business you are
trying to sell to, you know, one of them. The other five in the room
are looking at you blankly. You need to break the ice and you interpret your
house for two reasons. The first reason is the point.
I've already touched on. Pictures that are
conversational, are typically in my experience. The pictures that I enjoy them, how Sinatra also find
MS. Access from. But also you need to get
these people engaged. You need to get these
people interested in listening to you. And the best way to do
that as connect with them, build some rapport in the room. If you've built some good
rapport in the room, suddenly the story
that you're trying to tell will become so
much more natural. Because it will feel
like a conversation. You won't stand there talking, reading off a script and
please, if anything, you'd get from this
scripts in pictures. Rehearse what you're
going to say. Think about the topics
you want to gather. Think about the
time that you have. Because in a lot of
cases, if you overran, these people will not
have the time to give you additional time to cover up
everything you want to cover. But do not sit there reading off a bit of
paper like this lifting you're looking down
because people won't be able to hear your
use out your mumbling. If you're not
making eye contact, people will naturally
not trustee. Weird. I don't know any any
psychology behind it. I won't claim to, but I know if someone is presenting
to me and they can't look, it doesn't invoke
much confidence. You've worked in.
You've broken the ice. You don't need to
think of something extravagant to do
to break the ice, but walk in and talk
about yourself. Who are you? Where do you come from? How long have you
been there for? Me for a few one
or 21 line jokes. I'll ask everyone else
how they're doing. Awesome, how long they've
been, where they are, asked them about their day. Get some feedback from them
before you even start. If you're getting
feedback from them before you've even
started pitching, the likeliness of you getting
feedback while you're presenting will go up
significantly, right? So you've broken the ice. They're engaged, they're
listening to you. Fantastic. Why are you here? Now? Actually, before I go into that, I think I have
mentioned it before. There's one thing I always think you need to have in mind when you're presenting the best presentations, the
best pictures. They almost come
across as a storybook. You need to take these people sitting in the room
with you on a journey, no matter what you're selling
them or how bland it is now how boring you think what
you're talking about is. Nephron. Thanks. A lot of people do. You're selling stationary
and new things, selling stationary, boring. You would be surprised how important stationary as
to their business and you'd be surprised
how many people have tried to sell them
stationary, right? The only thing you can
do is bring it to life. It's important to them because it's a cost to their business. And it's very pretty relevant to the running
of the business. You need to bring it to life. For me. Step one, Why am I here? Why am I talking to you? Why they asked for this meeting? Now, in a lot of
cases is very easy. Just boil it down to the basics. I'm here because I'm
good at what I do. As a business. We think we are pushing to become one of the
best in the market. We think that we have
a product or solution. What product
solution or service, whatever it may be, the
suits your business. And this is why. This is why it's so important. You could say, yeah, and
it suits your business. But unless you're
demonstrating or explaining why you think that there's no real relevance to
what you're saying. So explain. This is why I think that if
you do a good job or not, if you're effective and
explaining why you're there, why you think it should
be important to them. Suddenly you have an
opportunity to talk about what you're there for
to begin the pitch per say, you've already
started the pitch. We won't actually spoken
about what you're selling. Now, before we jump into that, if you've got the
time on the table, open up for questions. This isn't necessarily what I'd say doing every
single situation, because if you open up for questions in the
back of your head, you've got that stopwatch and you know how long you've got left before you need
to get out of there. You're putting
yourself at the mercy of the questions of the people
sitting in front of you. If you've done a
really good job, already, bad job, they
will have questions. Now, if you want to talk time, if you want a short timeframe and the stakeholders you're
presenting to haven't given me long period of time where they've got a hard stop at the end of the meeting, then at the beginning
before you start. So I'm gonna I'm gonna
get through this and then I'll make sure I leave some time at
the end for questions. But if anything really
important does come up as we go through and just
feel free to stop me. Now then you've kinda warn them that unit time, times time. But you are still engaging
with them and you are still trying to keep
it conversation when that's what it's all about. Not only for the sake
of them listening, but also you feel unnatural, confident in what you're saying. Now, a lot of style was
people at this point. They like to hand out printed versions of what
they're presenting. And they will talk
to you and talk through about how important
it is what you have on paper. Now, for me, that's not
personally my style. I think giving a handout out at the end of the meeting
is very important. And I would always
make that handout slightly more in depth than what you've put on the
screen and what you've presented because it's, you'd have a lot on the
screen and a lot going on. All you're doing is to attract your attention away from what's coming out of your mouth
and what's on the screen. Please? From all my experiences, just keep this in mind. If you want to give out
a printed version of your presentation at the
beginning of the meeting, fully expect people
to sit there reading, heard a rustling through it. If you don't want
them to do that, it's gonna put you off,
give it to them at the end. My experience, if I'm presenting to a new
group of people, I leave it and
give it to them at the end of the little takeaway, slightly alter what
I'm giving them to. Provide a bit more
information and make it an interesting joke
about bedtime reading. And it's all very positive and that's what I
do, that's my style. That might not be your style. As I said, there's never a right or wrong way of doing things. But just bear that in mind
that people can do that. Now, it is important what you put on the screen is, as I say, I don't think it's as important as people sometimes
make out for it to be. As I say, people
buy from people. You want to instill
confidence, sorry, instill confidence in the
people you're presenting to. And the way that
you're presenting. That doesn't mean you've got to be all flamboyant, charismatic. You've just got to get across, you know, your staff, if you know your stuff. And you've seen confident in
what you're talking about, people suddenly have confidence
in what you're saying. It's surprising how well
and simple this is. But it really, it really, I've seen it be as
simple as that. If you're confident you're
clear on what you're saying and you know what
you're talking about. And you can ask,
answer questions without having to rush
around thinking too much. It's surprising, your passion, the product, your knowledge
with the product, service solution,
whatever it may be, does get across so well to the people that
you're presenting to. So please learn about
what you're selling. If you're a salesperson, day in, day out and you aren't necessarily on the
technical side or the service side or
the production side of whatever you're pitching. Maybe spend a bit
of time in their learning about how it all works. You'd be surprised how much
of an impact that has when you're sitting in front
of the stakeholder that is quite
technically minded. Now, sometimes this can be a touchy subject
within a pitch, but I do think you should
talk about competitors. Now there's a right and there's
a wrong way to do that. Slanderous comments
about your competitors. I don't like for me, they don't sit well. If you're criticizing
your competitors, service their
products, whatever it may be, I don't like it. And many people are buying
out there, don't like it. I think it's very
dangerous thing to do and I'd never recommend it. Now what I would recommend is going away and
looking at what your competitors are
doing and starting to pick out the differentiators
for what you're offering. Talk about why your
product is good rather than why their
product is bad. Talk about why your
product is different and what additional
benefits it can bring. Now, I'm sure in many cases to the stakeholders
you're presenting to, they'll know the benefits are
your competitors products. We'll be using them now or
that have had someone from that organization pitching to them relatively
recently before them. Get them thinking about
what's different about you. Why you price has been
boring, one, better service. Think YOU, what do you
have a differentiator? You clear on what your
differentiator is. Now at said at the beginning, a picture is a lot like a story. Every story should be
slightly different, and if they weren't slightly
different, it gets boring. It's as simple as that. Now, your differentiator,
your benefits, they don't have
to be the same in every single pitch
and presentation. Because you are pitching
to different people, different businesses,
different industries. The benefits that your
product is bringing or the issue that your
product is solving won't necessarily be the same. So bespoke what you're saying, bespoke your differentiators. Think about that when you're
going into each meeting. Don't just have one
PowerPoint presentation, your whip out and you
talk through and then you put away and you go
to the next place, you whip it out and do
the same presentation, you put it away day in, day out. It will get style. That is for sure, it will
definitely get stale. But it might only resonate with 15 to 20% of people
do go out and see because it will be quite evident to the people
you're presenting to. You haven't researched or
understood their business well enough to be able to really touch on the points that are keeping
them up at night. Just think about that
before you can enter your next page,
think about Brian. Issues is this business facing? What really is my product
bring to the table? And it's so important that you can at least find one
thing and it might then, there are certain things
that the groundbreaking, they won't solve the problem. But just, just take a moment. If you're, if you're
selling a pen, It's a very boring
cliche example on this. But you can produce a pen that
last 20% longer role cost, 20% less than that
businesses suffering with the increased cost of doing business at the moment due
to the inflation rates, you can save them money. Then that sounds
boring and style, but actually now you know, there are bricks and mortar business and their cost of businesses going
up and they're gonna be looking to bring down costs and other areas and says one of the areas you
can do it for them. No problem. They don't even have to look. You've brought the
solution through them. You see what I've done there? It's simple. It's
out of the box. But the messaging that comes
with it makes it tailored, it makes it bespoke, it makes it relevant to them. And it's a key point I
want you to really take down and think about before
your next presentation. The final point, I'm
just going to make care around what
makes a good pitch. Now your numbers,
now your costs. If your service and
you're looking to deliver a return on investment, know your boundaries,
your bandwidths, understand how you fall. You can push it and understand realistically what
you can offer. Understand how much it's gonna cost you to deliver
whatever you're doing. And understand where your
line is in terms of price, understand what you have to say. Actually, no, we can't
do any less than that. Understand how to go and don't
feel afraid walking away. You don't necessarily
have to sell there, and then you just need to
leave a good message, right? So those were just some of the handful scattering of the key things to think
about when you're pitching. I might leave you with one more that's just popped into my mind. Don't be afraid to not
answer a question. If you get asked a
question when you're, when you're at a pitch,
when you're presenting, you can't answer there and then please don't be afraid
to say I'll come back to me. The wrong answer
or a bad answer or slightly misaligned answer
will cause a lot more damage than an answer a week later, the correct answer a week later they're well thought out answer. And with that, before I think of anything else, I'm going
to leave it there. And I'm going to summarize
this class and talk about what I think it'd be an interesting project
before the next one.
6. The class project: In today's class, It's been
a plate being very broad. I'm going to follow
up with some more, slightly more focused down
niche class is around the subject in and around when I post the class
about closing the deal. So it's been interesting,
as I've said, after the end of a
lot of these classes. In some cases, the key is
again in the follow-up. As I said at the end, the
end of the class about approaching a prospect when
trying to get to this point. The keys in the follow-up. Think about the fact
that the South Cyprus hurdles in the way that a lot of salespeople
talk about hurdles, you're jumping over hurdles. There's problems. You need to solve. Pieces of puzzle you need
to find on each step on the cell cycle is a piece of the puzzle you've
completed right? Now you're at this point,
new pitch to them. They enjoyed it. They
received it well, they're going to
come back to you with some thoughts before
you leave the room, saying that you'd
really appreciate some proper Britain
feedback and you'd want to present it to them and in
99% of cases out, yeah. What do you ever
get on the phone? We'll give you some feedback. I will do some proper
written feedback if we've got the time and make
sure you get it. Even if you think the pitch when hopefully you want to know why, Because you want to incorporate it into what you're doing. And think about how you can improve the way you're pitching
and future, right? So the key is in the follow-up. Get your feedback
and keep pushing, keep knocking on the
door in the right way. Don't push hard. It's like no, you there. They've inside here and they're checking in with them,
see how they're going. And eventually if, if you're, if you're in the right space, then you've touched on
the right subjects. And your product or service
really is relevant to them and really can
bring them benefits. You'll get your
opportunity to price it. If that's what you're doing in your industry or
you'll get the you get the opportunity to run a
trial, whatever it may be. So for this week's class, in your next three
upcoming pictures, we had ten prospects
in the last class. This is going to be
focusing on three pictures. So hopefully we'll be
working roughly in six. The one in three yes ratio. Before you go to the pitch, answer every single question
I've brought up today. From is it the right
time to ask for the pitch through to
who am I talking to, the nature of the pitch, through to the follow-up? Think about it and then the section in the middle around the
case we could pitch, try and incorporate it, try and think about
it as you're going in to do the presentation
or the pitch. Because the more you're aware of what you're saying
and the more you're aware of how to make things better but better
results you will find. And I'm really looking forward
to hearing how it goes. Because as I'm saying, this is very subjective. Pitching is very much
driven on styles. There's some really good
stuff in this class. But I do think to a degree you should adapt it to your
own personal style. My message will remain, listen actively to what
your prospect is saying. And do your research and
you've got the knowledge. You can answer the questions. If you've asked the
right questions, you get the right answers. Not always positive, but
you'll get the answers. You need to further
develop your proposition to alter what you're
bringing on the table. To really deliver the
best service solution or product to your prospect
as you possibly can. And by doing that, one step closer to
closing that deal. So thank you very much. Once again, I'm sure I'll
be back very shortly with the next class on
how do you close a deal. And that will be another
interesting one. But for now, thank you very
much and have a good day.
Sam Ardley, Sales and Business Development
