Getting your sales pitch right takes time and effort but do it correctly and you will stand out, be remembered and win business. Bluewood’s expert pitch and presentation team have put together these top tips to help you perfect and polish the way you prepare, write and deliver successful pitches.
Preparation:
- Research; put yourself in the shoes of the audience. Make sure you find out as much as you can about the client; their industry and specific requirements. This knowledge will enable you to adapt your approach and will make you stand out from the start.
- Tailoring; do you need to present an off-the-shelf product or do you need to show that you can mould your offering to the client’s need?
- Benefits; make sure you can explain the positive difference your product can make to the client – don’t just list its features.
- Proof; back-up what you say about yourself/your product with; evidence, statistics, illustration and client testimonials – without this proof, the client may wonder if you can really deliver.
- Key message; have a very clear idea of your main idea or the call to action and don’t be afraid to repeat it.
Delivery:
- Body language; how do you come across? Body language covers various elements or soft skills and each needs to be considered in terms of the non-verbal communication it gives to your audience:
- Hand gestures – this can help back up or accentuate your words
- Eye contact – a key way to make a personal connection with the audience
- Posture – use confident stances to show authority
- Smiling – show warmth, clients want to work with people they like
- Presenting sitting down versus standing – be aware of the difference each makes to how you deliver
- Voice control; this is key in how to communicate successfully:
- Volume – don’t shout, don’t whisper; match the volume to the room
- Speed – most people speak too fast when they present, slow down
- Emphasis – highlight key words and phrases that you want to communicate clearly
- Pauses – they give you time to breathe and provide the audience time to digest what you’ve said
- Tone/pitch – these are useful tools to vary your voice and keep an audience engaged
- Practice; this is the only way that the content will sink in and the more you practice, the more confidence you will have. Ideally do this on camera or in front of colleagues so you can get feedback.
Visual Aids:
- Slides; don’t overload slides with too much information – some of the best presenters cut out text and only use pictures.
- Speakers notes; don’t feel you need to memorise the entire pitch as it’s acceptable to use a few note cards to make sure you are on track – keep them to a few bullets each and don’t use it as a script to read from.
- Leave-behinds; it can be useful to provide additional information in an appendix or hand-out for the end – don’t feel you have to put everything in the main presentation deck.
Q&As:
- Managing; some people are happy to take questions during the presentation, others prefer to leave them till the end – decide which you will do and explain this to the client at the start.
- Negatives; don’t just hope that difficult question won’t come up – list all the tricky things you could be asked and make sure you can handle them if they arise. Wherever you can, bring the question back to your positive messages.
- Handovers; if you are presenting as a team, make sure you decide who will answer which subjects in advance – this will help to show you are a team that can work effectively together.
Bluewood’s pitch training courses are perfect for preparing people and building their skills and confidence – if you want to be ready to pitch, we can help – please get in touch.
