Most, if not almost all, of my conversations with existing and potential clients include this statement. Yes, there are likely some clients who are still small and growing that need more people to talk to to get their business revenue to critical mass, however, if you haven’t fine-tuned your presentation do you really want to talk to more people?

One of the first steps a Business Owner, Sales Leader, or Business Development Manager should be considering before they try to get in front of more people is what is my Elevator Pitch and what is my 60-Second commercial. Then, they need to refine and dial in those two things until they can present them seamlessly. Now, to be fair, it’s likely you can’t wait until it’s perfect so you need to get out there, and if you are an “I gotta have it perfect kind of person,” then you will likely stifle your growth with “Analysis Paralysis.”  But you must have a reasonably good handle on your Elevator Pitch and 60-second commercial if you want to make an impact while engaging potential clients/customers. Otherwise, you will likely waste those engagements.

Your Elevator Pitch should be a 10-second intro about what you do for clients – That’s it. All you want this statement to do is Wow, the potential client, and challenge them to ask how you do what you proposed. For instance, At My Biz Coaches, we lead with “We help our clients uncover $100K in incremental revenue without spending additional money on marketing or advertising.”  This is normally met with amazement or doubt, but in either scenario, it leads to what we want, which is for the potential client to ask “How?”

At that point, we jump into our 60-second commercial. Which briefly describes the process and the deliverables we provide to help our clients achieve these results. Again, this is in 60-seconds or less. If you have done this well, the potential client is highly likely to be willing to commit a little more time to understand more about what and how you do what you do. This is now the beginning of your Sales process which should be a documented process that you lead virtually every client through to ensure that you get the same predictable results.

When you are finding that you are closing 30% to 50% of your clients that enter your sales process, now, and only now, are you ready for more leads. You see the Elevator Pitch is your hook, and this grabs their attention. Your 60-second commercial tells them what and how you do it. If they have no interest in doing this for themselves or someone they know, then the conversation stops there. No more than 2 minutes wasted, move on to the next person. You will now only be presenting to people that are your target audience. But this process only works if you have a solid pitch and commercial. This is your conversion process, Pitch, Commercial, Presentation.

The next step is understanding your metrics. If you pitch 10 people and only give your commercial a few times, then your pitch is weak. Now, if you share your commercial with most or all your pitches, but then only give 2 or 3 sales presentations, then either your commercial needs work or it’s possible you aren’t talking to qualified candidates. Finally, obviously, if you present to most or all 10 that you share your commercial with but don’t get 3 to 5 sales, your presentation is bad. Either way, now you have a process to follow, when the process is not working, you can evaluate what is broken and you can fix it.

This process works for networking or in-person sales, telemarketing, online marketing, recruiting, etc. it’s a basic sales principle. When you get this process nailed down, now you can begin to add more leads which will generate more sales and ultimately more profits, which is the name of the game. For more information like this, subscribe here or go to MyBizCoaches.com to sign up for our Blog.

ETW