Sold! Why an emotive sales pitch wins each time
Sold! Why an emotive sales pitch wins each time
By Stephanie Oley
Picture this: your salespeople are about to pitch to a valuable new prospect. They’ve prepared the sales deck, honed their spiel and cleared their throats.
They launch into their numbers-heavy sales demo – and you stop them mid-rehearsal.
Why? Because one of the biggest mistakes a salesperson can make is to focus overly on the features, and not enough on the benefits. In other words, all data and no emotion.
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To an earnest sales professional starting out, this might seem strange. What – bring back the brute tactics and drama? Be like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, or a slick telesales caller convincing people to buy stuff they don’t want or need?
Actually, emotion-based selling is a lot more sincere than that. Effective sales techniques are about demonstrating how your product solves a problem for the customer – and how they’ll feel once that problem is removed. That approach marks a powerful shift in thinking.
How to spot a rookie’s sales pitch
However, emotion-based selling is easier said than done.
Learning how to weave emotion into your selling technique takes practice, as any experienced salesperson will agree. Listen to most presentations during a beginner’s sales training session, and their initial efforts are all about the facts:
To sales professionals starting out, this looks plenty emotional. What could be more exciting than savings or convenience, right? However, these are in fact product advantages –qualities that make the product better than its competition. What you now need to add is the benefit to the customer, or how it will make them feel. To revise the above:
This ability to communicate the emotional benefit becomes more natural with experience, and it can be learned.
The right pitch for the right customer
One of the first things that trainees learn is that not all emotional sales pitches are made equal.
A critical part of perfecting the emotional hook is to first qualify your target customer, and try to understand their pain points. (We’re assuming you’re already speaking with the decision-maker, by the way. Don’t waste time devising a sales pitch for someone who will only pass you on, forcing you to start all over again).
According to the Centre for Continuing Education’s sales training facilitator, John Le Mesurier, a starting assumption to make is that many seasoned decision-makers will be guided more by life experience, and less by cold hard facts. Your challenge is to discover their working style and respond accordingly.
For example, are they workaholic loners? Perhaps they’ll relish personalised touches, such as regular check-ins or access to VIP events. Are they rule-bound bureaucrats? They could be drawn to a service that has the safety net of flawless reporting. Are they anxious types, always feeling guilty about something they didn’t do? Find the soft spot, and show how your product can be the solution.
Introducing the price
Having built your prospect’s genuine interest in your product, at some point you’ll also need to discuss the cost. Here, remember that talking about price should always be a discussion about overall value, not the price relative to some other product or service.
For example, a generic running shoe might initially seem more profitable to a sports retailer, compared to a pricier branded shoe. It might have a lower wholesale price, and a higher markup for the retailer. But what if the generic shoe’s low brand awareness attracts fewer customers? What if its lower quality leads to more complaints? The retailer now needs to sell a lot more product, to enjoy the same profitability as selling the popular brand.
This is an example of where a conversation might shift to long-term rather than short-term value.
Whether your team sells custom flooring, medical technology, vitamins, graphic design or any other product or service, remember there’s always a way of putting the price into perspective. Know your product and your competition, and prepare a range of pricing arguments to counter the typical objections.
Sales is a timeless art. Some professionals attend CCE’s sales training workshops because they need help in meeting ambitious targets. Others attend to better understand how their product development or marketing efforts can support the sales team. Others again attend to generally improve their persuasive skills, ensuring that exciting new ideas stand a better chance of being adopted internally.
But no matter your goals, success will often boil down to your skill in invoking the right emotion.