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Match Made: Romancing the Audience for a Better Sales Pitch

Business pitch decks aren’t confined to stiff and stuffy deliveries. You can find inspiration outside the boardroom, especially if you’re up for a sales pitch.

To outdo the competition and close your sales, you need to be creative enough when selling your product. One way to do this is to call up your inner Cupid to establish personal engagement that results in investment and loyalty.

Just like a great romance, your relationship with the customer should be a lasting passion. Don’t settle for shallow enthusiasm. Get your audience to love you.

Courtship

All romances and sales pitches start with the courtship stage.

Look up your prospects and align your marketing strategy to your client’s wants and needs. Your competition could be bigger, more experienced, and more influential. In this case, don’t try to beat them at their own game.

Try to create your own playing field.

In the book Brand Romance, brand experts Yasushi Kusume and Neil Gridley discuss high design principles that ensure customer loyalty. According to these principles, a recognizable brand identity is one way to effectively bring your product to the audience.

Introduce yourself during your pitch and build a narrative around your journey. After that, you can present a value proposition to show solutions unique to your services.

Have your visuals reflect your brand’s distinct character, whether by incorporating your logo or by using your company colors into the deck.

Passion

Think of your pitch as a first date with the audience. Sometimes, their attentiveness dies halfway through your speech because your offer might not be too impressive. People have a limited attention span, so make the most out of your pitch.

A bit of humor lightens the mood and disperses any lingering tension. However, make sure that all these seemingly unrelated points still lead back to you.

You can only entertain your listeners with interesting anecdotes for so long.

Delivering a dragging and winding speech not only distracts prospects from your major ideas but also dampens their interest.

Commitment

Don’t let the connection with your listeners go cold. Letting them walk away without convincing them of your importance will ruin your chances at making a sale.

Cover as many blind spots as you can, and avoid making common pitch deck mistakes that alienate the audience. Do away with fillers, but don’t force yourself to be perfect either. Act natural and be confident.

People feel more at ease with someone who uses the conversational tone while establishing their authority on stage. Take notes from your previous sales pitches to see which tactics worked to attract people and which ones failed.

Keep the Flame Alive

Be intimate with the audience, and court their interests by building upon your identity. Having a distinguishable personality sets you apart from the competition. Keep their attention by delivering engaging stories that eventually point back to your main pitch.

Finally, commit to maintaining their interest by constantly improving your public speaking skills. As in any relationship, the connection you make during your sales pitch should ideally lead to a long-term commitment for your business.

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Featured Image: “A Taste of Romance.” by Esther Spektor on flickr.com

5 Pitch Speaking Tips from Winston Churchill

One of the most effective speakers we can learn from is Winston Churchill. In fact, both advertising agency gurus and pitch experts have cited his skills, be it crafting and rehearsing a presentation speech, as brand communications expert, Carmine Gallo lauded, or for writing persuasive advertising copy, according to creativity mentor, Luke Sullivan.

Churchill’s speeches have always been powerful and persuasive. These can be used as inspiration for more convincing business or sales pitches, especially if you’re selling something. Use these five pitch speaking tips to get the most out of your pitch:

1. Begin Strongly

Start with a question, cite a relevant quotation or challenge your audience. Whichever way you pick, be sure to give your audience a strong and credible impression. You also need to empathize and show that you’re willing to help solve their problems.

Remember that you need clients or partners to invest in you. Giving a confident impression and backing it up with an effective pitch make for a strong introduction.

2. Have One Theme

A compelling idea is the cornerstone of an effective business pitch. Being able to centralize your speech around one idea describes and clarifies what you want to say. Sullivan suggests that in order to find that one idea, look at your product and find the best way you can describe it.

If you can summarize that within one description, putting in the supporting points to back up your claims will be easier to make. Your audience will also have an easier time following your pitch too.

3. Use Simple language

Using a conversational tone, together with simple and easy-to-understand language gives potential partners an easier time following your pitch. This saves you time in reiterating your key points and explaining them to the audience.

Rather than giving a technical explanation, stick to highlighting what your product or service can offer your clients. Gallo suggests you let them know what they get out of it and why they should care about your pitch.

4. Leave a Picture in the Audiences’ Minds

Words are more than just a means to convince your clients. They can also be used to paint pictures in the audience’s minds. This is important because people buy what they can see, more than hearing the description, more than reading about it, clients and prospects need to visualize the product and the situations where it can help them.

To help you get the most out of this, try to find out what a professional pitch deck design specialist can do to enhance your pitch deck.

5. End Dramatically

As with your beginning, you need to make a dramatic ending. It can be a call to action, a challenge for your clients to invest in your proposal, or an important fact they can associate with your brand.

When you make your conclusion, always refer to your main idea and how it is organized. If your pitch is structured with the strategy of highlighting your best selling point, you already have an edge against the competition.

One Last Thing

Leaving a lasting impression can potentially be as powerful as an initial impression. Learning to apply these tips will give you the same edge that Winston Churchill enjoyed.

To help you make your speech work with a matching pitch deck, take a few minutes to get in touch with us, all for free!

References

Audio Archive.” Winston Churchill. Accessed August 18, 2015.
Gallo, Carmine. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Sullivan, Luke. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. 3rd ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.

Featured Image: “NY – Hyde Park: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library – Winston Churchill Portrait” by Wally Gobetz on flickr.com

How to Take Tough Questions Like a Pitch Expert

Q&A’s are the perfect opportunity for welcoming observations and clarifying people’s confusion about a certain idea. This opens the floor for deeper audience involvement, although a tough question could sneak through and ruin a stellar performance.

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Here are tips to handle your next Q&A session like a pitch expert:

Take Questions Only at the End

Take audience questions like feedback. They help tune up future pitches. However, taking queries during a structured speech distracts you, ruins your flow, and steers you off-track.

The main part of the speech is not the right time to field questions. If audience members attempt to sidetrack you while speaking, inform them politely that there will be time allotted at the end to address their concerns.

It’s important to avoid coming across as avoiding the question altogether. At the same time, you need to take control of your own pitch to deliver effectively and efficiently.

Don’t Lose Sight of Your Objectives

The Q&A session is a part of your pitch – and should still follow your goals. Set objectives to keep your overall speech concise and effective.

Avoid getting distracted or taken off topic. If you’re asked a question that might seem loosely connected, answer it in a way that always draws it back to your topic.

But never refuse questions, even those that seem difficult or out of your scope of research. Every question is an opportunity to make your message even clearer. In the face of an intimidating question, be honest with the audience, but say that you’ll get back to them once you’ve found the answer.

Keep Yourself Calm and Composed

Even if you’re legitimately taken aback by a hard question, never let it show. Letting your negative emotions show in the midst of a pitch makes you look unprepared and unprofessional, reducing your credibility.

People easily pick up on signs of nervousness such as stammering, fidgeting, shaking, and unnecessary vocal interjections (your uh’s um’s and er’s). Stage jitters can also get your adrenaline pumping, having the awkward side-effect of speeding up your speaking pace.

Taking a deep breath calms those nerves, and gives you a brief chance to quickly internalize and properly respond to the question. This short pause will make your answer more natural and articulate, as well as your speaking more relaxed and well-paced.

Conclusion

Answering questions is an important responsibility as a speaker. No matter how perfect your performance might have been, your listeners will always have additional questions. Address these questions in a way that makes you more effective and knowledgeable.

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Reference

“Responding to Questions Effectively.” University of Leicester. Accessed July 16, 2015. http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/presentations/questions

An Effective Probing Strategy for Your Sales Pitch

Lack of probing questions can be one reason why sales proposals are often rejected by clients.

Many presenters forget that throwing open-ended questions such as “How are you doing?” or “What are you up to?” successfully convinces your clients to share the information you need to meet their needs.

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First, build rapport and connect with them to get their attention and establish trust.

Briefly introduce yourself to highlight your pitch’s importance. This compels clients to answer your questions without question.

Why Probing is Important

In sales pitches, your main goal is to persuade your clients to take action.

Study your clients’ objectives and how they should be met. Know their needs and wants to craft an attention-grabbing pitch. Doing so makes them realize that you’ve made thorough research about their company, showing them that you’re just as interested in them as you want them to be interested in your proposal.

More than presenting your products and services’ features, advantages and benefits, make your clients feel that you care about them by meeting their expectations. Satisfying their needs makes them see that you value them above anyone else. This gives them reasons to listen and share their side of the story once you ask them probing questions.

When to Probe

A good sales pitch and ample presentation skills can make an effective sales proposal, but probing is an equally important technique. Your clients look for products and services that satisfy their company’s needs.

Probing is important when relating their needs with what you’re offering. Knowing their concerns prepares you to connect them with your products and services’ benefits, making them think that your idea can achieve their desired outcome.

Start by asking open-ended questions such as, “What are your plans for reaching your objectives for this area?” and “What strategies are you going to implement to make this happen?” to delve into more details.

When you notice that your clients have objections, ask whether they understand what you’re trying to emphasize. This can help clarify some concerns before they make their decision.

How Probing Becomes Effective

Probing encourages your clients to talk more, convincing them to share their thoughts and give you more information that can help you motivate them.

The “who, what, when, where, why and how” questions tell you more about your client’s concerns, letting you better understand their needs by asking:

  • “Who will…”
  • “What, specifically…”
  • “When will…”
  • “Where, exactly…”
  • “Why does…”
  • “How does…”

Know whether you’re asking appropriate questions or not. Be careful not to overdo it by asking more questions than necessary. Going overboard results in data that might not be relevant at all to your proposal, wasting both your time and theirs.

Prepare possible questions to quickly address any issues they might have, preventing them from delaying their decisions.

Conclusion

Applying this sales pitch technique makes clients more likely to approve your proposal. Once they realize how much you’re interested, how much you care about meeting their concerns, and how much you’re helping them achieve their expectations, you’ll convince them that your offering best suits their organization needs.

Knowing what and how to ask makes your sales pitch effective. This is because clients will see that you understand how probing helps satisfy their needs, showing that you’re serious and dedicated about what you do.

Clients are more confident to hire somebody who goes out of their way to give them a satisfying experience. Be the person that your client would never hesitate to go to for solutions to their needs.

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References

21 Powerful, Open-Ended Sales Questions.” RAIN Group. Accessed June 25, 2015.
Probing.” Changing Minds. Accessed June 25, 2015.

Three Effective Ways to Evaluate Your Sales Presentation

Rehearsing your sales presentation prepares you for the actual delivery, but it’s only the first half of the process.

Be prepared for whatever questions your audience can ask you.

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According to Michael and George Belch, the advertising industry has its own way of evaluating pitches before suggesting it to clients. Play your own devil’s advocate to find out if your proposal will work by asking yourself three questions:

1. Is Your Solution Consistent with Your Client’s Marketing or Business Strategies?

Each company has their own way of doing business.

Some gadget distributors buy their products from reputable manufacturers. Some grocery stores give shelf space only to common goods.

See if your proposed solution is consistent with how your client sells themselves in their market and how they operate their company.

2. Is Your Sales Pitch Consistent with Your Strategy and Objectives?

Is your business presentation simple enough to show exactly what it’s supposed to?

Visuals are great selling tools, but excessively using them drowns out your message.

Using images effectively with the right words presents your message in a straightforward manner, as with the Crisis Relief’s “Liking Isn’t Helping” campaign.

In his book, Hey Whipple, ad veteran Luke Sullivan presents the following questions for presenters to think about:

Do you want to highlight the features and benefits of your product?
Do you want to pitch your product or services to solve your client’s specific problems?
Do you want to highlight your advantages over the competition?

Whatever tactic you use must be consistent with these strategies, and your slide content mustn’t overwhelm your message.

3. Is Your Sales Pitch Appropriate for the Client and Their Customers?

Whatever proposal you present will always affect your client and their customers, if they have any.

More than the products or services you present, the PowerPoint deck you use and your manner of speaking should be relevant enough for the client to relate to and not be offended.

Dated pop culture references may work, but they lose their relevance when faced with the wrong demographics.

Stay truthful, tasteful and straightforward when delivering business presentations. Give your clients a good reason to invest in you.

Staying Prepared

Anticipating your client’s questions and your audiences’ reactions gives you enough room to stay calm and composed when you deliver the actual presentation.

Being critical of your own work lets you spot possible errors before entering the conference room.

Lastly, having an extra pair of eyes to improve your work makes your business presentation the best it can be.

Take a few minutes to talk to a professional presentation partner today!

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References

Belch, George E., and Michael A. Belch. “Creative Strategy: Implementation and Evaluation.” In Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective. 6th ed. Singapore: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2003.
Sales Presentation Skills: Stay Relevant to Pitch Ideas.” pitchdeck.com, May 11, 2015. Accessed June 22, 2015.
Sullivan, L. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads (3rd Ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
Nudd, Tim. “The World’s Best Print Ads, 2012-13.” AdWeek. Accessed June 22, 2015.

3 Acting Tips for More Persuasive Business Pitches

Movie and theater actors can instantly influence and move viewers however they want. They excel at transfixing audiences, making people value their presence enough to attentively watch their words and actions.

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According to speech coach Gary Genard, speakers can also use these crucial acting skills to inject persuasion into their pitches.

Here’s our own spin on how acting techniques can leave a great impact on the crowd:

Own the Stage

Deliver your business pitch the way actors give their all, resulting in shining moments. Solid commitment to your pitch leaves your audience with something important to remember.

Owning the stage means taking full responsibility for whatever happens during your discussion.

Besides sharing relevant stories and citing related quotations or important facts, your listeners are more likely to believe you if they recognize your credibility on the topic and your composure in handling difficult situations, unexpected or not.

Use Your Emotions

Actors have the eloquent skill of playing with their own emotions. They can laugh at one point and cry at another.

In pitches, you also need to express your genuine feelings to best connect with your listeners. At the same time, choose the appropriate tone for every occasion.

If your business speech tackles a major breakthrough in the industry, you have to sound involved, proud, and enthusiastic. If you’re trying to emphasize a hurdle that needs an immediate remedy, speak in a serious tone that will call the audience to action.

Control Vocal Power

Controlling your vocal power is an effective way to emphasize a point.

This is another acting skill that stage artists use to make scenes realistic and convincing.

Your business pitch doesn’t sell solely because of its content. Your pitch delivery also plays a big part in your success. How you convey your main idea and key points through your

How you convey your main idea and key points through your voice and choice of words creates a rhythm that carries the meaning to your audience.

Consider acting as a core skill to deliver dynamic and persuasive business pitches. Show your audience that you’re an expert on the topic to make them believe everything you have to say.

Express the appropriate emotions according to your statement’s aim and content. Control your voice to match the kind of drama you want to inject into your pitch.

Incorporate these  tips to engage and entertain your audience the way actors do, and you’ll turn your audience into loyal fans, effectively converting your leads into more sales.

Got a pitch deck requirement you need to work on? pitchdeck.com will be pleased to help you. Email us at sales@pitchdeck.com and we’ll contact you ASAP.

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References

An Actor’s Secrets for Great Business Presentations.” The Genard Method. Accessed June 9, 2015.

4 Crucial Skills for a Better Investment Pitch Deck Q&A

Convincing clients to accept your proposal is a feat in itself because while you can establish its relevance and support it with facts, they’ll always have questions after you deliver your investment pitch:

How much will implementing your proposal cost? How long will it take? Who will be involved?

Don’t worry about the Q&A of your investment pitch. Idea pitch deck is also a form of marketing and advertising.

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Audience persuasion is this practice’s lifeblood. Knowing how to address these concerns is the final hurdle that every presenter must pass.

As this article addresses the final parts of your pitch deck process, allocate the information you need in your PowerPoint’s index section.

Getting Started

Addressing the clients’ concerns show them that your proposal is superior to the competition.

Ensure that the idea was well-formulated to account for perceived inconsistencies.

Northwestern University’s marketing expert Philip Kotler (1972) shares four planning skills to reinforce ideas during the final stages of your investment pitch deck:

Planning the Product

Your product is your proposal. It’s the thing you want to pitch to your audience.

Do you want to introduce a new gadget in an expo? Are you pitching a stock investment plan? Are you presenting a recommendation from your earnings’ reports?

Define your product in such a way that clients know exactly what you’re offering them. This should be reflected in the way you package and present it.

Determining the Price

Cost is a big factor in whether your client will approve your proposal or not.

Audiences need to see how their budget (if they give you one) will be allocated, and how much they’ll profit. While they do have the spending power, they prefer cost-effective solutions that give the best value.

Getting past this particular point requires you to accurately identify what it would take for your clients to invest time and money in your idea.

Listing down your costs or presenting graphs to outline how you’ll spend their money presents a clear picture of how the expenses will play out.

Planning the Distribution

Once you’ve established the product and costs, how do you plan on making your product available?

After impressing your audience with your offering’s features and benefits, tell them where and how they can get it.

Will it be available in major tech shops? Can people only get it at the Apple Retail Store? Will it be exclusively available online?

Planning for this often ties in with the concerns of costs.

Promoting Interest

Keep your idea’s benefits in mind. Keep your audience interested by specifying exactly what they can get out of your proposal. Focus on powerful suggestions such as:

“This insurance plan will provide coverage against a wide variety of accidents, all for a fraction of the competition’s costs”
“This new processor will allow your phones to use more apps at the same time, increasing your productivity”.

Clients and their businesses are not only responsible for maximizing their profits, but also for maintaining a strong and lasting customer interest. The more well-defined your idea is, the more convinced clients will be.

Accurately defending a pitch is a crucial investment presentation skill.

When the client’s approval is on the line, your audience will appreciate a speaker who not only focuses on the style of presenting but also stands by his or her topic well enough to convince others to invest in it.

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References:

Kotler, P. (1972). A Generic Concept of Marketing. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 36, No. 2.

Does Your New Business Idea Have Potential?

So, you finally have the next billion dollar business idea.

You might think that this sets you off for greater things, but the real challenge is only about to start. There are plans to make and perfect as well as investors to impress.

You have a long road ahead of you.

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Before anything else, you need to make sure that your business idea has potential. After that, it will be much easier to convince others to consider your plans and take you up on your offer. As the old saying goes, “ideas are a dime a dozen.” It doesn’t really matter that you have this unique new idea that no one else has come up with before. The test is in how well you execute the tasks ahead of you.

For that, you need to develop the idea you have. What makes some ideas succeed, and others fail?

Diffusion of Innovations

In 1962, a sociologist named Everett Rodgers sought to answer these questions. He conducted a research project to learn more about how and why certain ideas spread. He gathered data from hundreds of case studies and published his findings in “Diffusion of Innovations“.

In his book, Rodgers was able to explore the different factors that influence how we decide which ideas are worthy of acceptance or rejection. These factors were examined by professor and author David Burkus in the context of business.

Now we’ll give our own take on the topic and see how you can gauge the potential of your own pitch deck.

Relative advantage

Relative advantage deals with how well your business idea and pitch deck compares to what is currently available on the market. The product or service you’re planning to launch should be seen by others as an improvement on the current standards of your industry.

This often happens when you’re presenting your product or service’s advantage in your pitch. Highlight how you stand out from the competition by stepping away from your slides and presenting a live demo. The concrete and visual evidence will convince your prospects of your skills.

Give them the statistics on how well you’ve performed in the past, or how in depth you’ve done your research, but before you reveal your own features, always start with the unique benefits only you can offer.

By tapping into this characteristic, you’ll be able to win people over with tangible proof, as well as a good track record over the competition.

Familiarity

Of course, your business idea will need more than an innovative edge to succeed. People also gravitate towards ideas that are familiar and relatable. If they can use past ideas and experiences to understand what you’re proposing, they will be more likely to accept and adopt to it.

Most of us prefer to try out things that have some semblance to what we’re already familiar with. Always keep in mind that even as you push boundaries, you also have to create an emotional connection with the target audience.

Check out the current trends that resonate with people’s preferences and incorporate these into your pitch. Share a personal story or experience that’s directly related to what you’re going to talk about.

The sense of familiarity before introducing the big reveal to your audience eases them in before surprising them out of nowhere.

Simple and easy to understand

Another factor to consider is the complexity of your business idea. It shouldn’t be too difficult to understand for others to adapt to it quickly. In other words, it shouldn’t be complex at all. It should be simple and straight to the point and this is where a pitch deck specialist can help.

The people you’re hoping to convince should be able to understand the logic behind it.The technical details might be complex, but it should still remain fundamentally easy to understand. An idea that’s too difficult to grasp can end up intimidating your potential audience.

You might have too much raw data at hand, but not all of it should go into your slides. Take only the most important data, and present it in a visually appealing manner. For this purpose, graphs, charts, and other visual representations can come in handy.

The details that you leave out can be further expounded on in your speech itself.

Able to test and verify

Related to the previous point, the next thing to consider is how effortlessly others can interact with and test out your new business idea. The more accessible your concept is for verification, the more individuals can familiarize themselves with it.

Once that happens, the likelihood of their accepting it grows. A quick example of this is how musicians allow audiences to stream their music for free on sites like Spotify or SoundCloud. Through these sites, their audience can see if they like their new material and then commit to buying the full-length album.

Get plenty of positive testimonials for your brand to put on your slides. It’s especially helpful if you can get the help of famous influencers, or better yet, brand advocates who are genuinely interested in your business, and who would be willing to advertise you to their followers.

Put your name out in the market with the help of other people, and build your network before, during, and after your pitch deck presentation.

Can be observed and shared 

Finally, it will also help that your business idea can yield noticeable results that others can share and talk about. Rodgers calls this quality “observability.”

If your idea is open to observation, the easier it is to find and reach out to a wider audience. In other words, the more visible your new product becomes introduced to a mass audience.

In the article by David Burkus, he gives Banksy as an example. He wrote, “One of the reasons for Banksy’s success is the observability of his work. Many artists challenge social conventions in unique, seemingly playful ways, but Banksy’s work is highly public and easily shareable. It isn’t just stuck behind the glass in a single gallery or museum.

Don’t fail your prospects with empty promises. Part of your pitch deck presentation is the assurance of quality. Show them that your ideas will have large returns from their investments. During your pitch, give instances when your product or service delivered well.

Does your new business idea have the potential to succeed? It definitely will if you improve on the finer points by using these criteria. Polish your message using these pointers and get started on creating a pitch deck that will wow investors.

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References:

Burkus, David. “The 5 Common Characteristics of Ideas That Spread.” 99u. 2013. Accessed January 30, 2015.

Featured Image: Joey Gannon via Flickr