Critique of the Stick It Sales Pitch

I came across the attached video on Instagram the other day, and I realized that it has an interesting sales lesson to dig into. Due to the nature of this sales pitch being a pop-up style booth, this demonstration of the product he is selling comes across very scripted and showy. I believe this kind of sales pitch is a good example of what Mattson meant by his fourteenth rule, “a prospect who is listening is no prospect at all”. A more effective way to gauge people’s interest is to ask them questions rather than rattling off all of the features and advantages of your product you are selling. This salesman is clearly an extrovert that has been trained to lead with all of the great things about the product, especially at the trade show-like sales environment, without digging into which people may be interested in the first place. With this, Mattson additionally advises salespeople to develop a prospecting awareness (rule 10). This entails separating out the people you interact with between suspects and prospects. In this instance, all of the people he talks to are suspects because they are people who he may be able to sell the stick it to, but he has not connected with them in any way yet. For this reason, it makes it more difficult to close a sale. By building trust and rapport first, this would put this salesman in a much better position to naturally share about the benefits of his product rather than pushing the features upfront. He is breaking Mattson’s fifth rule of answering unasked questions. When you believe that he may be finished, he continues to go on about the great aspects of the product that you don’t want to miss out on.

This presentation video teaches us to use sales techniques that are more genuine that exercises empathy, perspective-taking, and care. Although this salesman is clearly passionate about the stick it, he could approach the selling technique in a way that frames his sales as a mutually beneficial exchange for prospects that really need it.