At VSA, we craft the sales messages for our clients, using a great deal of their input and review. We experience first-hand the effectiveness of said sales messages and thus have invaluable ex-perience with what works and what doesn’t.
First and foremost, the biggest mistake most businesses make is to craft a sales message that is nothing more than a list of features. Remember, while you may be in love with your product / service (as you should be), the prospect has never heard of it, nor cares about it except how it can help him/her become more successful. So, the foundation of any sales pitch needs to be about how your offering will help your prospect.
Recently, we posted a blog about defining your ideal buyer persona. This step is both necessary and foundational to crafting your sales pitch. After all, how can you know what your customers really need unless you research them? Beyond that, it might be a good idea to research each prospect individually just to get an idea of how to hone the message specifically for them. The benefit of this extra step depends, of course, on your time, budget, and the overall value of each new customer.
One of the easiest ways to understand how to craft an effective sales message is to use an ex-ample. Take, for instance, what we do here at VSA. We are a B2B prospecting firm that exe-cutes calling campaigns for our clients. While it makes sense financially for just about every company to have a sales task force, they are often hired for their ability to close, not their ability to prospect. And, while marketing is necessary and undeniable, there is a gap between market-ing and selling – and that gap is called prospecting. Prospecting is a different beast than either selling or marketing. It’s a unique endeavor and not something your marketer or seller excels at. Yet, it is necessary because without it, marketing becomes ineffective and your sellers have no one to sell to. We are the middle men, the connectors. Our clients have a need to connect their marketing and sales efforts to increase their bottom line. They have a list of prospects ready (marketing efforts) and they’ve hired the best salesman to close the deal once the appointment is made, but they need the experts at making the appointment. We are said experts.
If we were to get a decision maker on the phone, our sales message would go something like this:
“Hello, ____. This is _____ from VSA, a B2B prospecting firm that executes appointment setting campaigns for our clients. Have you ever felt there was a gap between your marketing and sales efforts? Many of our clients felt exactly the same way before they came to us. We are the pro-specting experts. We take the leads that come from your marketing and set up appointments through a targeted calling campaign so your talented sales force can close the deal. Would you like to set up an appointment to learn more about our calling programs and how they can help you gain new customers?”
Notice that while the explanation we offered to you, the reader, about our value to our clients was eleven sentences long, our actual sales message was a mere six sentences, many of them very short. Brevity and being succinct are of extreme importance in any sales message. Time is valuable and most people suffer from a shortage of it. You have to push past that barrier and fast. You have to pique their interest quickly and then hold it just long enough to get them to commit to taking the next step – the appointment.
In conclusion, it’s important to remember that all sales messages are a work in progress. There’s only so much you can know about their effectiveness before you start using them. Research and creativity will only take you so far. Eventually, testing in the field is necessary to turn your ‘good’ sales pitch into a ‘winning’ sales message.