How to improve your sales pitch: shorten it

On the telephone while cold calling, in a lead generation email, on a trade show or a conference meeting people, you need to get the attention of potential customers with a sales pitch.
The goal is to inform and to convince with information about your product or solution.
In all cases you don’t have much time or can use plenty of phrases in order to make sure they remember you and your product or solution.

If you tell too much people will only get confused or misinterpret your information or even get it completely wrong.

Duration of the sales pitch

How long or how many sentences does it take to explain the purpose of the solution you are selling?
If it takes longer than 20 seconds, the person addresses might already have lost his intention and probably hasn’t understood the purpose?

How long does it take to then explain the differentiators or competitive advantages?
If it takes longer than 60 seconds stating several benefits, they will not remember much and get confused.

People remember maximal 4 things

According to a study of Edward Awh and Edward Vogel people will only remember 4 things at one time (The bouncer in the brain. Nature Neuroscience 11(1), 5-6).

Thus people can remember 4 things:
- The name of your product or solution
- The purpose of your product or solution
- Max 2 to 3 items or features about your product or solution.

If you sum up more features and benefits, with a bit of bad luck they will only remember the less important ones and even forget about the exact purpose.

Improving pitch by shortening and reducing

Thus if you require more time to explain or have too many differentiators you need to revisit and rethink.

Shorten what you say or write about the purpose of your product or solution.
Cut down on the number of features that you pitch.

Once they are interested and ask for more information, then you can increase slowly the amount of information.
As always repeat some of the already explained or presented features. There is nothing wrong with repeating as it increases the chances of remembering.

Our pitch:
- LEADSExplorer
- Lead generation and CRM
- Revealing company names of your website visitors for more efficient cold calling.
- Seamless integration of website visit data into CRM for improving your lead generation, lead capturing, nurtuing leads and customers, sell more.
Of course there is more, but then you just might forget the important parts.

What is your sales pitch?