How much email do you get in a typical day? How about in a month or year? One of the people who works for us at SellingBrew has a habit of not reading or deleting unwanted email pitches—instead, they just sit in her inbox forever.
At the time of writing, she had 25,490 of these unread messages in her inbox and another 29,777 in the clutter folder.
Given the volume of sales pitches we all encounter on a daily basis, it’s no wonder salespeople struggle create pitches that stand out. The volume of messages seems to be increasing exponentially. And the quality of messages seems to decline at the same rate.
A quick look through that inbox with all the unread messages makes it easy to see why it’s so hard to get noticed. Every email SEEMS TO BE YELLING! “Sales alert!” “Free shipping, today only!” “Your 25% off expires at midnight!!” Promptly followed by, “It’s not too late to get 25% off!” One message even promises, “35% OFF… ANYTHING. YOU. WANT.” But it’s not even clear from the email what exactly they are selling.
While they are slightly more muted, the B2B messages in that inbox aren’t any more compelling than the ones from retailers. On the contrary, they’re diluted with jargon, buzzwords, and corporate platitudes. One advertises that a “leader in quantum optimization” is attending an annual conference. Yawn. Another announces the long-anticipated release of version 5.1 of a piece of software. Yawn. A third suggests that “GenAI-enabled procurement” is a “silent revolution.” Maybe that would be meaningful for someone who worked in procurement—but not for the recipient of the email.
Besides irritating potential customers, this deluge of advertising creates a really challenging situation for sales teams. How can you get through to your prospects in such a noisy environment?
But like most challenges, this one also conceals an opportunity.
In a world full of terrible sales pitches, a really good sales pitch stands out and grabs attention. That begs the question—what makes a really good sales pitch?
One Quality of a Perfect Pitch
You might think that a perfect pitch is a myth. But after doing some research, we at SellingBrew think it might actually be possible to create a pitch that’s awfully close to perfect.
Our research uncovered seven critical features that every good sales pitch shares. The first is the most important:
Prospect targeting.
If you try to speak to everyone, you actually speak to no one. The most successful pitches are tailored for a very specific audience.
That process starts with getting to know one segment of your customer base. You need to go beyond demographics and platitudes and learn what drives them. What are their hopes and dreams? What things do they like and dislike? What keeps them up at night? And which of their problems can your products and services solve?
Armed with that knowledge, the sales materials start to write themselves.
However, to come up with a truly perfect sales pitch (or at least as close as possible), you need to make sure it also includes the other six characteristics. You can learn about them all in Building a Better Sales Pitch. It dives into each of the seven ingredients in greater detail, covering all the essentials for crafting a compelling and effective sales message.
The perfect sales pitch might not exist—yet—but it definitely is possible to create a pitch that cuts through the clutter and really resonates with your prospects, even if they have 55,267 spam messages in their inbox.
Building a Better Sales Pitch
How do we arm our sales teams with the most effective messages possible? How do we ensure our messages will actually cut through the clutter, differentiate our offerings, and move the sales process forward?
