We’ve had many great examples of salespeople visit our class this semester, and we discussed even more. A lesson that we’ve heard several times is that in a startup situation, it is good to sell well and sell often.
Sam Weber was a great example of this, as she said that she tells nearly everyone she meets about ProfilePasser. You never know who you’ll meet and who will help you out along the way, so it’s important to have a casual “sales pitch” prepared for any situation.
I use the term sales pitch here loosely, because what I am referring to is not a typical pitch. You want to be able to succinctly tell anyone about your business in casual conversation, without sounding like you’re trying to pitch it to them and without sounding like you are bragging. If you’re sitting on a plane, you want to be able to chat with your neighbor who you’ve never met and tell them about your business, even if you don’t know their profession or interests. It would be silly to go into a full pitch about a window frame business to a research biologist, but what if your neighbor ended up being a major contractor who was looking for a new window frame provider?
There are two lessons that I’m trying to get across in this post: 1) know how to “pitch” your idea without pitching it, and 2) be willing to tell everyone you meet about your business using this non-pitch pitch.
testacr22
Great points, and I think the situational aspect of this pitch is really one of the key issues here. One has to use his or her “sales sense” to evaluate the other person’s attention span, interest, etc. and tailor the pitch to their time and attention constraints.
This has happened to me with a couple of products I have sold in the past. If you know what you are selling like the back of your hand then you can pitch it in 20 seconds or 10 minutes. It is something that is really important to be able to do in sales as you never know what situations you will face day to day. Great post!