Sales Tip of the Week: Respect Your Prospects’ Time

Real estate mogul Donald Trump was once asked how someone who pitches him an idea can be successful. “They have to be enthusiastic, succinct, and fast,” Trump advised. I couldn’t agree more. Your prospects are deluged with offers like yours every day, and they will only listen to pitches that are delivered quickly and with passion.

The takeaway? Get to the benefit, and get to it fast.

While it may seem like you’re too busy to practice boiling your pitch down to 60 seconds or less—focusing only on its most compelling differentiators and working your belief in its value into your delivery—I can’t stress enough how worth it this time will be in the long run. Seemingly paradoxically, the most practiced pitches often come across as the most natural. Perhaps this is because the people delivering them aren’t visibly struggling to remember a long list of product features and what’s amazing about what they’re selling.

In sales, you rarely have a second shot. First impressions can mean everything ... in fact, Malcolm Gladwell based his entire bestseller, Blink, on the incredible amount of decision-making that happens in the first two seconds of encountering something or someone new.

Think of your 60 seconds as an extension of Gladwell’s two, and you have a better chance of genuinely interesting your prospect.

Post written by Toby Nangle on 9:15am, December 15, 2009
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