It is a constant battle to get and retain the attention of your potential clients. They don’t know you, what you do, and how well you do it! Audiences are time poor and under pressure to meet a deadline. In other words they don’t have time to sit through another boring presentation that will have no relevance to them.
Your audience is no different to you or I –they are time poor. When you have the opportunity to deliver your pitch to them you have got to make a conscious effort to engage them and retain their attention to have any chance of delivering a successful pitch.
There are five things you can do in your pitch to keep your clients interested and engaged, and more likely to invest in your products and services.
Be Different
There is the traditional start to a pitch – “Thanks for giving me your time…” Zzzzz – Boring! Start with some pizzaz. Strive for more shock and awe than bore. You need to find an opening line(s) to your pitch that gets your audience sitting up wanting to hear more. Whether that be through a quote, statistic, or story. Or even something you do… Your opening needs to scream “I’m different you need to pay attention to me!!!”
Have Personality
Your clients want to know you. If they are going to trust you enough to pay you to provide them your products or services they need to know who the person (i.e. You!) will stand behind what is being offered. As part of your pitch you need to reveal your personality. Let your enthusiasm and personality shine through – don’t be afraid to let your passion for your business be communicated through your energy and vitality as you deliver your pitch.
Deepen the Relationship
As part of your pitch you need to build an emotional connection with each member of the audience. To do that you need to share stories to reinforce the logical reasons that they should invest in your products and services. By sharing your story and the stories of other clients that you’ve helped you will build an emotional connection that your clients will relate too.
Talk to their needs and wants
One of the biggest mistakes made is to talk about what you think is important. Sharing what you believe to be the greatest features and benefits of your offering is a risky strategy. The better tack is to take the time to find out what problems your clients have and present your products and services to highlight how they solve the problems your clients have… And, more importantly share the benefits your clients will enjoy when they the problems faced by your clients have been resolved!
Change Up
Once you have the attention of your clients, worked hard to build the connection you need to maintain their interest. This requires you to not only have interesting and relevant material in your pitch; you need to deliver it in a way that will maintain their interest. You need to vary your movement, energy, and vocal delivery to keep your audiences attention.
A successful pitch, whether it be a short elevator pitch, or a longer sales presentation needs to engage your audience. When you engage your audience you will stand out from your competitors who are still delivering ineffective pitches that are not getting or retaining the attention of the audience. When you stand out, you will sell more!
If you would like to find out how you can deliver an engaging elevator pitch, sales pitch, or webinar why not check out the range of courses and online coaching available to members of the Dynamic Speaking Library
