The 20 Best Sales Pitch Ideas for Your Small Business

The best seem smooth and effortless, but great sales pitches are carefully crafted and delivered.

Sales Pitch Ideas

From carefully choosing your words to staying on point, here are 20 sales pitch ideas that should keep your team morale high.

Choose Words Carefully

You need to get the message out on the goods and services you’ve got for sale. Choosing the right words gives a pitch the power to close. Don’t underestimate simple words like “new” , “sale”and “off” to make a big difference to any pitch.

Know Your Client

Salesforce reports 82% of sales people don’t understand their prospects. If you don’t research their preferences, you’re more than likely telling them why you like the product. If that’s the case, your pitch could fall on deaf ears.

Talk to the Right People

Even if your pitch is perfect, it wont close if you’re wasting it on the wrong people. Finding out who the decision makers are is a big part of your due diligence. Sometimes all you need to do is ask your contact in the small business you’re trying to sell to.

Craft a Call to Action

A good pitch needs to direct your prospect to the end goal. The very best way to do that is with a call to action. Even if they’re not ready to buy, setting up another meeting with one of these moves things along.

Be Unique

Cookie cutter doesn’t cut it when it comes to an effective sales pitch. American Express Open Forum suggests you stay professional but try to stir up some curiosity at the same time.  You might start with something like: “I’ve got something to show you, if you think you’re ready.”

Be Personable

Stodgy isn’t the way to act if you want sales. Being informal means being personal. You can even share a little something from you life to warm things up.

Have a Central Idea

Being all over the map wont help close that deal. You need to have a central point you keep coming back to. This glue that holds a lot of sales pitches together is often the benefit to the customer.

Stick to 3 Big Points

Most people cant remember more than three things at once. That means your whole sales pitch needs to revolve around three ideas to be effective.

Avoid Metaphors

These are thought provoking in great works of literature. However, they can confuse prospects in a sale’s pitch. Telling someone your product ” is the Holy Grail of merchandise”  will only cloud the waters.

Don’t Try to be Smarter than Everyone Else

Building a good team around you draws on the people that have other areas of expertise. Putting together a team of experts helps your sales pitches have depth and scope.

Define the Target Audience

The Hubspot blog takes this old adage a step further. You need find your target audience and imagine how they will use the product to fully engage with them. Don’t just find them. Try and get inside their skin. Checking out their social media posts helps.

Rehearse Often

Practice makes perfect. Try to find that medium ground where you can hit all the big points in your presentation without sounding like you’re reading from a script. Work in front of a mirror or friends.

Invite Conversation

A good sales pitch is a two way street. Letting prospects ask questions helps to understand their needs better and starts conversations.

Don’t Ignore Social Media

SuperOffice makes a great point about successful modern sales pitches. They report 90% of successful sales people use social media to craft great pitches that work. Sharing  relevant content  and responding to comments qualifies.

Use Icons

Remember this is a sales pitch. It needs to have a good rhythm and pace. Using icons with statistics keeps things moving along.  We process visuals much faster than text.

Use Catchy Email Opening Lines

Email is effective but competitive at the same time. A good sales pitch in cyberspace shouldn’t just be an introduction. Engage right away with a statistic or timely reference to news of the day. Something like: “Have you seen the latest on…?”

Focus on Being Helpful

Using hard sell techniques is old school. The traditional pitch is all about closing the sale. The new method is about asking the right questions, listening and solving a real problem with your goods or service. Upwork has a good graphic on the subject.

Try Rhyming

Ever wonder why the best tag lines stick in you head? It’s because they rhyme. Try adopting this proven method into your sales pitch.

Start with a Question

People generally answer questions. If you start your sales pitch with one, you’ve started a back and forth that can wind up in a sale. Try something like, “Have you ever wondered about …?”

Learn to Tweak the Pitch

Not everyone will buy what you’ve got to sell. However, you can learn from even the folks that say no if you engage them. Finding out what works and what needs to be changed is a process.

Baseball Pitcher Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "The 20 Best Sales Pitch Ideas for Your Small Business" was first published on Small Business Trends