Like many of you in this class; the Sales Project was something I took and prepared for seriously. Especially given this was what we’d been gearing up for all semester (and how much weight it carried on our final grade), I began preparing and here are 3 things I learned from my preparation and from the actual sales “pitch” itself:
- There’s no one way of preparing, really: Regardless of how many situations you may picture and try to prepare for in your mind, you never really know what you are going to be asked until your customer is in front of you and asks what’s on their mind. As such, the best way to prepare for it is by knowing everything there is to know about your product and figure out potential concerns people might have and know how to address them in general.
- Listening is hard: The urge to keep talking about my product was hard during the actual pitch, however it is important to keep yourself in check and remember that no one wants to hear everything and anything there is to know about your product; let them ask the questions because they will (naturally) want to know how it is going to be good for them.
- When messing up, don’t highlight it: During my pitch I wanted to say “dilly-dallying” and instead said “diddlyduddling” – however it was important to bite back the urge to highlight that and apologize for it, and keep talking. I noticed from some other pitches that when people do laugh at or point out something they did wrong – it takes away from their pitch as the customer / person they are talking to is instead thinking about (or laughing at) what just happened, and their attention is diverted away from what you are trying to sell them on.
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