It seems strangely ironic that the end of our two week festival of posts on Pitching has been marked by the untimely death of veteran TV pitchman Billy Mays.

My fellow Sales Bloggers have quite rightly highlighted the flaws in the pitching model – particularly that it is a combatitive model of selling rather than a partnership model. Certainly, given the choice of building a relationship with a potential client vs pitching at them, we should choose the relationship every time.

But in my experience, pitching is becoming more, not less common nowadays. Not because salespeople want it that way – but because our buyers do. Beauty parades and pitches are common in the professions, and are extending their reach continually as procurement of services is “professionalised”. Procurement professionals often view building relationships with clients as an attempt to circumvent the “objective” procurement process and many prefer to keep vendors at arms length and to select based only on written material and presentations. Some even go as far as to disallow members of their organisations with personal experience with the vendors from taking part in the selection process in case they are biased in favour of one of the bidders. In fact they seem to value a “level playing field” over actually making the right decision using all the available information.

While I hope that some day they’ll come to their senses and realise that the ability to build a productive relationship with your clients is at the heart of good service delivery and so should be a critical part of selling and buying – I don’t hold out hope for a change soon. So pitching is here to stay: whether you’re a startup pitching for VC funding, or an ad agency pitching your ideas, or a salesperson pitching your product in front of a selection committee.

So if pitching is here to stay – what can we learn from the veteran “pitchmen” that will help us pitch better.

Well, first of all, let’s look at what a “pitchman” actually is. Despite the temptation to drop into a baseball analogy, a pitchman is not a pitcher. I believe the origin of pitchman came from the the fact that the salesman (it was always a man) used to travel with county fairs or other travelling events and had to put up a pitch (as in “pitching a tent”) to sell from at each new location. So pitching is not about lobbing a fastball at an unsuspecting customer – it’s about setting out your stall as attractively as possible. If nothing else, the pitchmen were entertaining – I wish I could say the same about the sales presentations in corporate situations I see.

Now since they travelled from town to town, the old pitchmen were dealing with brand new prospects all the time. Prsopects who didn’t know or care who they were. They didn’t have the time or the opportunity to gradually build relationships with their customers – and frankly, for the price of the products they sold, it wasn’t worth it either.

Instead they had to grab the attention of passers-by in only a few seconds. They used loud noises and loud voices – echoing the approach of buskers and street performers. Ron Popeil (founder of Ronco) opened his pitch for the Chop-O-Matic with “Ladies & Gentlemen, I’m going to show you the greatest kitchen appliance ever made!”

How can we do something similar today to begin our pitches in an impactful way? Well we certainly shouldn’t do what most people do in sales presentations: begin with long winded descriptions of who we are and the history of our company. By the time you’ve got through that, our clients will have switched off. Instead, focus on what’s going to grab the attention of of the client. And that’s usually his problem. Begin with a brief statement of value, what problems you’re going to solve and what it’s going to do for them.

What did the pitchmen do in the middle of their presentations? They always demonstrated the product. They proved it did what they said it could do. And they often got up audience volunteers (or later on TV, celebrity guests) to use the product too to prove anyone could do it.

We face the same problem in pitching our services. How can our potential client really know we can do the things we claim we can? It’s all well and good focusing on the benefits they’ll get from working with us (or from funding our company, or from using our ad campaign) – but if they don’t believe we can do it, the claimed benefits are meaningless.

Just like the pitchmen, our best course to prove ourselves is to demonstrate. To show our capabilities in action. Perhaps we can walk through a similar example of work we’ve done; or perhaps we can even use our time with them to actually start working for them by sharing ideas, jointly brainstorming & problem solving. That way they get to see what it would be like to work with us for real.

And how did the pitchment close? With unexpected value.

Just when you thought the product was going to be hugely expensive, they told you it was really cheap. And not only that, they were throwing in something extra: “But wait, there’s more….”

Now the “but wait, there’s more…” approach has become a bit clichéd, but the principle still works. Make sure what you’re proposing is perceived as so valuable they just can’t say no. And then add some more value.

Now, of course, there’s plenty more to do in sales – and pesonally I try to avoid getting involved in a pitch whenever I can.

But sometimes it’s just unavoidable. And when it is, we could do a lot worse than learning from the old-time pitchmen. Billy Mays knew this – he’d have been completely at home at the county fair selling vegetable chopper or knife sharpener. And when the time is right, you need to be too.

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One of the most difficult thing to get new (and even some seasoned) salespeople to remember is that sales is not about pitching. It’s not fair to say pitching rarely works because it does and there are instances where it is perfect. Example of this are the county fair and TV infomercials. In that environment Pitching is perfect you have anywhere from 5 seconds to 2 minutes to make your sale or you will never see your customer again. In that instance I say pitch away…. Really it’s all you’ve got.

For the rest of us it’s time to Ditch the pitch! I have a secret for you… Top salespeople are smart! The key to getting on top and staying there is learning your product inside out. You have to be creative, interesting, and free thinking. Most important you need to engage your customer.

Selling in today’s marketplace means asking questions. It means learning about your client, where they are now, what issues they are facing, and where they want to go in the future. Only after you have done all of that should you start formulating solutions.

This is easier said than done, because so many people are trained (by bad sales people) to expect a pitch. It is common to here “Just give me your pitch” or “How soon can you get me a proposal?” from clients. This is the ONLY time I’ll pitch and I still do not pitch on my product! I pitch based on my need for more information. Basically my “Pitch” is a longer version of this conversation: I have hundreds of solutions, how can I give you a proposal when I have no understanding of what your REAL issues are, what you have tried so far, and what you are ultimately trying to accomplish. My real version of this pitch is more like a 3-5 minute conversation and any reasonable person should be able to understand why this data is important. If they don’t… I move on. I am simply not willing to waste my time writing proposals where my chance of winning is similar to winning the lottery. I don’t want to guess what the right solution is, I want to KNOW. Refusal to participate is the final portion of my pitch and believe it or not it frequently turns the situation around for me. If this approach does not change the tide for me I would rather move on to someone else interested in solving their problems, invest my time there, out perform my peers, and win the deal!

I’m interested to hear what others think about pitching, and the processes they use to avoid falling into that trap. If you have a story to share or some thoughts on the issue leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you ASAP!

-Brad

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It’s odd that when you are thinking of a subject you tend to see it everywhere. If you buy a brand new BMW, it’s guaranteed that you will see that same model car everywhere you look. And so it came to me that I was wandering around prior to writing this article and found Geoffrey James article ‘The Sales Pitch is Dead’. No prizes for guessing what the article is about, but I liked what was said about developing relationships in which Geoffrey said “far from being a “sales pitch,” every customer meeting is an opportunity to strengthen the relationship”.

I will have to admit, that prior to that timely find, I was beginning to feel at a loss as to what to write about pitching. I don’t really pitch an idea to clients without them having some idea of what I’m going to say. Most prospective client interaction that I have is a collaborative process where ideas are arrived at together. By the time I get to a proposal situation, the client has as much of an understanding of all the requirements of the project as I do… so why do I need to pitch?

Then of course, I realised that I am pitching ideas all the time. That’s what brainstorming is, isn’t it? In the movies, a character in a brainstorming session will in all likelihood say something like ‘OK, let me throw a curve ball here!’ – meaning, I presume that the idea is a little way out of left field…..

(I would point out that living in the UK I have little to no knowledge of baseball at all, yet surprisingly the terminology seems to creep in. My apologies if I get it wrong. However, I digress.)

I bounce ideas all the time, with colleagues, management, customers, etc. They also bounce their ideas off me. The process is collaboration. Sometimes ideas are carried and improved upon, another will see the potential of the idea and instantly understand, and sometimes you have to reinforce the idea. To me the term pitching means throwing ideas around and bouncing them off other people. I understand why the term ‘sales pitch’ means the way it does in the way Geoffrey James says in his article, but in this situation pitching ideas is a healthy activity worth pursuing.

Supposing you have an idea that you truly believe in, a concept that you see will be highly successful. What if your idea isn’t understood? You recognise the potential but others don’t initially see it. Do you fight to make it understood? Passion for ones ideas can compel us to try and convince others of the merits of an idea and that is when you get into the realms of the ‘sales pitch’. Entrepreneurs, thought leaders and innovators will undoubtedly go through this a lot, because they are developing technology and ideas ahead of fashion trends and will have to convince investors and early adopters of their ‘vision’.

Is the sales pitch really dead? I think in the sense that Mr James talks about it is, especially in relationship selling. I have to agree with my colleague Colin Wilson; I too don’t like the term and its connotation. It suggests coercing or changing someone’s mind; it’s confrontational. Yet, if TV programmes like we have here in the UK like the ‘Dragons Den’ are anything to go by then the ‘sales pitch’ is still alive and kicking. Certainly, in realms where people are pushing boundaries there is inevitably going to be a gap between the innovators and the majority. At some point, these innovators have to convince everyone else that they have a vision of the future that will be successful and that might require a ‘sales pitch’ if nothing else to show the commitment and passion in the idea. This pitch may not be to us, but a few investors and early adopters to start the ball rolling. By the time we catch on, there’s no need to convince us.

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There is no doubt that sales is about communicating, and as such sales is very much about semantics. For most people when they hear the word pitch they either think of baseball or sales. Not wanting to get nasty notes, yes some in the UK may also think of cricket or a soccer field, indulge me here, for most it is likely baseball or sales. It is also likely that sales adopted the term from the sport.

If we look at baseball and see that the role of the pitcher is to get three balls past the batter without allowing the batter to connect and move forward to base. It is very much an adversarial situation, where the pitchers pitches of choice are the hard ball, fast ball, knuckle ball, the screw ball, or the ever favourite curve ball.  Not terms you want to practice on your prospects, although many still do, we’re all familiar with the expression “hard sell”.

I am sure that when sales adopted the term pitch it wasn’t for the potentially negative connotations. More likely it was to describe tossing ideas to buyers as a means of finding common ground; done right and for certain transactional products it is a viable means of achieving a mutually beneficial deal between buyer and seller.

As the sale gets more involved, layered or complex, “the pitch” becomes less effective as a productive way to sell and achieve mutual value. Don’t get me wrong, every sale contains a pitch somewhere, but in the “solution” or “interactive” sale it is a much less significant part of success.

In fact I recently wrote about an experience I had with a rep as we were getting ready to sell to a group of ‘C’ level buyers (Have Your Say: To Pitch or To Sell). He was itching to pitch, but the situation called for a more interactive approach to discovering and understanding the buyer’s reality and mutually defining the value. While it is true that we had an idea of the potential solution based on past experience, going in and delivering a pitch would have fallen short and cost us the deal. We are now on the short list of three vendors, and were told that one reason was the patience we displayed with our questioning style versus some of the other providers who came in with a pitch

Taking the time to peel back the layers and understanding how the buyer sees and wants things; engaging in an exchange that allows for a transaction that delivers value to both partied. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not going soft in my old age, at one point you have to pitch your ideas, differentiate yourself from the competition, but that is a logical part of the process with a greater likelihood of success than if pitching was the whole process as it is with many sales organizations and individuals.

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