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SALES | 7 MIN READ

5 Sales Pitch Examples

Too Good to Ignore

Written by Gabe Larsen

@gabelarsen

HubSpot also recommends this guide

for creating presentations that close
deals.

Get the Guide

Your sales pitch can make or break the deal, so it's a good idea
to have that nailed down before meeting with your customer.
It's your opening line, your verbal business card, and the first
thing your customer will hear when you call or meet with them.

I've been in sales for 15 years and have heard some really great
pitches and some really bad ones.

Access a guide to creating winning sales

presentations.
For this post, I'd like to discuss the anatomy of a good sales pitch
and share examples of the best sales pitches I've ever heard.

What is a sales pitch?

Sales pitches are also called "elevator pitches" because you
should be able to tell the story in the time it takes you to ride an
elevator with a prospect -- a maximum of 1-2 minutes.

Salespeople are past the point of giving prospects an hour-

long presentation to sell products or services. Nobody has that
kind of time and, to be honest, if you need an hour to relay
your value proposition, you're doing it wrong.

How to Make a Sales Pitch

Your sales pitch should be short and have a clear message. In

your pitch you should explain your customers (e.g., what they
do and who they are), the problem they're facing, a plan for
how your product will help them, and what their success will
look like as a result of using your product.

Your sales pitch should be short and have a clear message. In

your pitch you should explain your customers (e.g., what they
do and who they are), the problem they're facing, a plan for
how your product will help them, and what their success will
look like as a result of using your product.

Storybrand's Donald Miller shows the structure of a good sales

pitch in his book, Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message
So Customers Will Listen. He explains the elements of a pitch in
a very short list:

1. Character - Who are your customers and what do they do?

(i.e., accountants working in the United States and Europe)

2. Problem - What problem do they have right now? (i.e., they

are always busy and Excel spreadsheets for reporting are
hard to manage)

3. Plan - How does your product or service help them? (i.e.,

your company has designed a data visualization platform
that's easy to set up and automates busywork)

4. Success - What does success look like for your customer?

(i.e., they get to spend more time with their family/more
time with important customers and less time working on
reports)

"Short" is key when discussing sales pitches. Ideally, your pitch

should be a one-liner summarizing what your company does,
how they do it, and for whom. And this is not just a requirement
for sales reps. Anyone in your company -- from the CEO to
sales consultants needs to know your one-line sales pitch by
heart.

For my company, InsideSales.com, the one-liner would be:

"We help salespeople build and close more pipeline faster
using artificial intelligence."

So, how should you start your sales pitch?

The Sales Pitch Framework

This is the one-line version, but if you have time to properly
expand and work on a conversation, touch on points of
interest. Here's a framework you can use for building your
elevator pitch:

1. Problem: Start with a statement or question about the

problem you solve and share eye-opening statistics. Answer
the why.

2. Value Statement: Share a very clear, concise statement of

value. Be action-oriented and outcome focused. Avoid
using jargon. Share benefits.

3. How We Do It: Highlight unique differentiators and explain

what you do.

4. Proof Points: Provide clear reference examples and list

recognizable achievements. Share industry validation and
awards.

5. Customer Stories: Share customer examples and successes.

Tell emotional and personalized customer stories. Make it
real and tangible.

6. Engaging Question: Close the pitch with an open-ended

question creating a space to have a conversation.

Many companies use success stories in their pitches to ensure

the sale. Name-dropping really works, so be sure to use that to
your advantage. And if your product is small or light enough to
keep in your pocket, you should always have one on-hand to
show your prospect.

I always stress the need for a concise sales pitch. So keep it free
of professional jargon, don't get into the weeds and be sure to
talk more about your prospect and their problems than
yourself.

Nothing's more off-putting than a bragging salesperson talking

about themselves, their company, or their services. That's what
I call the "me monster." The actor in your story is the customer,
not you -- period.

Distribution matters
Lastly, presentation and distribution are everything. You need
to deliver your sales pitch to the right person at the right time
with the right tools on hand (like a demo, or free trial, or
presentation).

The sale starts with your list of contacts. Define your list and
personas, know their correct contact information, get an
introduction, and make sure you contact them at a time of day
when they're likely to respond. This is where intelligent sales
technology comes in.

Sales Pitch Ideas

1. Tell a story.

2. Include a value proposition.

3. Personalize the sales pitch.

4. Switch up your pitch.

5. Practice your pitch.

How can you make your sales pitch the best it can be? Here are
some sales pitch ideas.

1. Tell a story.
Keep your listeners engaged by telling a brief story. The story
could be either about the company or how a customer found
success through your product or service.

2. Include a value proposition.

What value will you be providing for this person or their
company? While your pitch should be short and sweet, the
value proposition is the core of your sales pitch.

3. Personalize the sales pitch.

Who are you talking to? Make sure your sales pitch is relevant
to them and piques their interest. You'll be able to customize it
so it addresses the items that are most important to the person
you're speaking with.

4. Switch up your pitch.

There are a variety of sales pitch types to choose from:

The One-Word Sales Pitch

The Question Sales Pitch

The Rhyming Sales Pitch

The Subject Line Sales Pitch

The Twitter Sales Pitch

The Pixar Sales Pitch

Depending on the potential customer and situation, change up

the type of pitch you use.

5. Practice your pitch.

Practice, practice, practice. Once you've created your pitch,
practice it so you feel comfortable presenting it in front of
prospective clients.

5 Great Sales Pitch Examples

I promised I'd give you some examples of great sales pitches,
and they've been pretty fun to collect. At the Salesforce's
annual Dreamforce conference last year, I visited booths and
recorded sales reps and their pitches. These are the best five
sales pitches we recorded.

1. Brightfunnel
"Brightfunnel is a marketing attribution platform designed to
help marketers understand the true value of their marketing
touches and their impact on the revenue and buyer's journey."

Pitch Contest // BirghtFunnel

This is the shortest pitch of those I heard at Dreamforce, and it

was chosen by our users as the top pitch.

Data actually shows a short pitch is better. Gong.io, for

example, demonstrates that talking about your company for
more than two minutes kills your sale. Our contest also served
as a good experiment. We had almost 7,500 votes on our sales
pitch contest, and the top two were the shortest at under 35
seconds. The longer the pitch, the less votes it got.

I can't stress this enough: Help your customer understand what

you do, who you do it for, and how in under two minutes.

Your customer is busy and doesn't have more than two minutes
to spend with you. A short sales pitch helps you as a
salesperson as well, because the faster you can disqualify
people who aren't interested in your offer, the faster you can
reach someone who is.

2. Conga
"We are a suite of intelligent automation solutions for
Salesforce, for everything from data, documents to reporting."

Pitch Contest // Conga

This was the number two on our list and the second most
popular of our contest. We had over 2,000 votes for this one.
This short pitch outperformed others because it simply speaks
to the user's needs. In one short sentence, I get the character
(Salesforce users), the problem (dealing with too much
information and too little insight, the plan (using intelligent
automation solutions), and the success (deal with all of this
through automation).

3. Vidyard

"We are a B2B video platform for businesses. We change the

way organizations communicate their video content through
onboarding, training, and knowledge sharing as well as
externally through sales, marketing and customer support. We
can show the ROI of your video marketing initiatives by tracking
who watches your videos, and for how long, so that you can
justify the spend on those videos."

Pitch Contest // Vidyard

Vidyard is a company that's been making waves lately -- mainly

because salespeople are finding video an effective prospecting
tool. They found great sales pitches are personalized, and what
better way to do that than to add a human face to your
message?

Their sales pitch rocks not only because they identify their
prospect clearly from the first sentence (B2B companies that
use video platforms for sales, marketing, or enablement), but
they also focus on the competitive advantage they have from
the get-go. They don't just sell this service, they "change the
way you communicate," -- and that makes a difference.

The Gong.io data also showed leaving the discussion about

competition too late in the conversation usually kills your sale.
Vidyard knows this, which is why they make sure to include it in
their pitch.

4. Xactly
"We automate and streamline the commission process for sales
organizations. For a lot of companies, that means getting you
off an Excel spreadsheet or a home-grown cumbersome
system. The Xactly advantage is that we've been in the cloud
since 2005. We have been able to anonymize all of our
customer's data to allow you to leverage different data points
when making your decision."

Pitch Contest // Xactly

The Xactly sales pitch focuses on the problem their customer

has -- an important part of a successful pitch. I discussed the
"me monster" above, and you should be wary of it when
creating a pitch. Xactly does this well. The trick is to address
your customer's problems and concerns and highlight how
your product or service solves these problems. In the case of
Xactly, it's about getting people off cumbersome legacy
systems and Excel spreadsheets.

5. G2Crowd
"G2Crowd is the user voice platform for people to accurately
say what they think about software and not be told by analysts
or people who don't use it, or get a reference from the best
customer. They actually hear it directly from the user and
engage with people who actually use the product."

Pitch Contest // G2Crowd

This is an interesting way to build your pitch: Make a note of

what really annoys your customer and pitch how your service
can resolve this grievance. It's another way of reframing the
customer need, and it works because it's a powerful way to
describe the situation.

When they discuss how you're being told by analysts what to

do, or people who haven't used a product, they highlight a
clear disconnect in the market between what you need and
what you get. The company allows verified users of products to
write reviews and becomes an essential resource for their
users.

Why A Short Sales Pitch is a

Good Pitch
An important note to make about these sales pitches is that
they are all amazingly optimized for a short conversation -- and
the sales reps were extremely efficient with their time.

All the top sales pitches were under 35 seconds, while the top
two winners (sales representatives from Brightfunnels and
Conga) were able to explain what their company does in 19
and 9 seconds respectively.

I can't stress enough how much brevity matters for a sales

pitch. Gong.io had the latest data on this, and they highlight
how certain language patterns for salespeople have a negative
effect on their sales pitch. Talking too much, using filler words,
and talking about their company for more than two minutes are
among the three conversation killers Gong identified.

They have the full data on it in an excellent article they

published on SalesHacker, but I think any experienced sales
representative would be able to tell you this without looking at
any data whatsoever.

Talking too much and not listening enough kills your sale. So,
keep your sales pitch short, clean, and simple! Your customers
will thank you.

Originally published Jun 7, 2019 3:30:00 PM, updated June 07 2019

Topics: Sales Pitch

Don't forget to share this post!

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