How To Pitch Anything And Close More Deals
John Ternieden
Close more deals and engage your audience and potential customers with Oren Klaff’s tips on how to pitch anything! Keep reading to find out more.
RELATED: The Fast and the Frequent: How Speed and Persistency Close Deals
In this article:
- Who Is Oren Klaff?
- Stop Wasting Time
- Compelling First, Convincing Second
- 4 Critical Things We Need to be Compelling
- Three-Step Fix for Your Pitch
Oren Klaff’s Tips on How to Pitch Anything
Who Is Oren Klaff?
Oren Klaff, managing director at Intersection capital and best-selling author, has used his professional experience as an investment banker to address common problems facing sales professionals.
Through his work, which includes selling companies, Oren has learned valuable insights and best practices that can help sales professionals sell anything, regardless of their industry. These best practices can help you pitch anything to anyone!
Here are a few of the gems Oren shared during his session at the XANT Sales Acceleration Summit 2016.
Stop Wasting Time
What hinders sales reps from delivering a great pitch and capturing the full attention of their audience? It’s spending too much time in delivering their idea to their prospects.
According to Oren, most selling today is broken.
He led off his session by reviewing the ABC model of selling (Always Be Closing) and summarized the model’s five major steps:
- Rapport
- Features
- Benefits
- Trial close
- Overcome objections
- Close
He explained that most sales professionals take between 45 minutes to an hour to go through all these steps during a typical sales presentation.
The problem, he said, is that the human attention span lasts only about 20 minutes before there is a steep decline in interest and retention.
Sales reps are in a race against the clock until their audience zones out. If you spend too much time building rapport and explaining features, by the time you reach the benefits, your buyers have checked out and you’ll never get to a close.
For your prospect to pay his or her full attention to what you’re trying to sell, you need to work your tactics and strategies around those 20 golden minutes.
Compelling First, Convincing Second
As a seller, your responsibility is to find a way to plant your idea into the mind of the buyer whenever you’re pitching anything.
Most people think that in order to do that, you need to convince buyers of the absolute need for your product or service.
Oren challenged that way of thinking. He shared a quick overview of how the human brain processes information.
Here are the stages of how the human brain processes information:
- When you first meet someone, the initial contact is recorded in the back of the brain, called the brainstem. The brainstem is the first stage of the brain and is responsible for processing emotions of love, hate, fear, lust, and contentment.
- The next stage of the brain is called the midbrain, which processes social interaction and relationship hierarchy.
- Lastly, you have the neocortex, which evaluates what someone is saying and concludes how to respond.
What does all this mean?
Too many sellers try to be convincing right from the beginning, but this approach doesn’t follow the proper sequence. Despite trying to convince the prospect that the idea is beneficial, the brain has a hard time making a decision of whether to accept the narrative as true or convincing.
In terms of how information is processed, the brain first needs to identify who you are and what to think about you before processing what you’re saying.
That means sellers should instead work to be compelling before they try to convince their prospects.
What does it mean to be compelling? There are four critical ways to do just that.
RELATED: How To Be Remarkable, Memorable, And Compelling In A Remote Call
4 Critical Things We Need to be Compelling
With the short attention span of people, simply presenting an idea or product won’t be enough to close deals. Sellers needs to be more compelling to deliver a proper sales pitch that prospective clients will buy.
If sellers need to be compelling, how do they actually do that? How can they become compelling enough to pitch anything?
Oren offers a simple, four-step process every seller should follow in order to be more compelling and trustworthy in front of buyers.
1. Breakthrough Email or Call
This is where you use your cold calling or warm calling techniques in order to make an introduction.
Cold calling isn’t just used for building pipeline. By using innovative cold calling techniques, you may even get a chance to pitch your idea to the CEO of your target company.
Sending out sales emails is also a popular way to introduce yourself and your idea to your prospective client. If you create an email template, keep it short and concise.
Remember to define your goal right away while still keeping it personal.
2. Short Pitch
This is where you’re quick. Just because someone is willing to jump on a call with you, doesn’t mean you need to talk for 45 minutes.
Keep it within six to 10 minutes and don’t forget to share your big idea.
Still, be sure to pace your pitch for your client to be able to understand what you’re telling him or her. It would be a total waste if your prospective client won’t be able to grasp the idea.
3. Pitch Deck
What is a Pitch Deck? This is a short presentation usually in Powerpoint, Prezi, or Keynote format explaining an idea or business plan.
If you do a good job with your short pitch, your prospect might ask you to send them something so they can see if the story you told matches something in print.
Be prepared to email your pitch deck right after the call. The excitement would have worn off if you wait for a day or two.
4. Full Presentation
After you’ve had your short call and sent them something, you can set your meeting for the full presentation.
This step will ensure that you already captured your client’s attention. This session may be longer than previous encounters, but you’ve already piqued your prospect’s interest.
Three-Step Fix for Your Pitch
It’s important to remember that sellers often spend so much time on their pitches that they lose the interest of buyers.
Instead of spending 15 minutes on building rapport, then 45 minutes on a pitch, you need to condense everything.
Oren recommends these three simple adjustments:
1. Make Your Pitch 20 Minutes or Less
Be clear, concise, and get to the point. That includes covering features, benefits, use cases, and ROI.
This way, you’ll be working your story around your client’s 20-minute attention span.
2. Raise Your Status
Status drives attention.
You need to get past the midbrain that evaluates status by proving you’re a high-status person. This way, you’ll be able to compel your client to pay attention to your idea.
3. Begin Closing at the End of Your Pitch
Nobody will have more respect for you than if at the end of a short, well-crafted pitch you try to see if there’s alignment and how to move toward a deal.
This is a strategy that’ll help you pitch anything to anyone and get a good response.
We hope these tips on sales pitching will help you create a great pitch and close more deals. If you aren’t getting good results now, try Oren’s easy three-step fix.
And remember, when it comes to pitching, keep it short and sweet. With the attention span of people getting shorter these days, nothing beats being compelling and trustworthy when pitching anything.
Do you want to know more about sales pitching and how to close deals? Ask your questions in the comments section below!
You can watch Oren’s full presentation, or any of our other sales summit speakers, on demand by registering today.
UP NEXT:
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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on April 15, 2016, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.
