B2B Sales Pitch - Success strategies that work

There is no such thing as the perfect sales pitch. There are also no universal formulas for how to persuade every customer, but you can follow best practices from sales and communications professionals. Then it’s just a matter of practice until your graduation rate causes envious stares.

We have summarized the most important tips and strategies for successful sales pitches in the B2B environment for you. If you use only half of the strategies, it will make a clear difference. That’s why: Bookmark this article and read it multiple times.

What is a sales pitch?

The sales pitch (also: product pitch) is the last step in the
Digital Sales
The sales pitch is the last step in the funnel to closing the sale. Sales pitches can take a variety of formats: Phone calls, video calls, emails, face-to-face meetings or presentations. They can last 30 seconds or 60 minutes. Only one thing is always the same: In a sales pitch or sales presentation, salespeople try to convince prospects of a product’s benefits and persuade them to buy, answering questions and overcoming objections.

Phases of the Digital Sales Funnel

Sales pitches are only successful if companies optimize all phases of the digital sales funnel. The more strategically they position themselves in the individual phases and network their activities across phases, the faster the customer acquisition.

As in traditional sales, the first step is to generate the
Lead generation
. Companies need to attract the right prospects to your offer. Online advertisements and inbound marketing measures are particularly suitable for this purpose.

The best strategies for digital B2B lead generation

The second step is the
Lead qualification
This can be optimized and partially automated with the help of various digital tools. High lead quality is a prerequisite for salespeople to succeed with their sales pitches. The better the lead qualification, the easier the sales call.

Learn more here: What makes a qualified lead?

Sales Pitch: Building a successful product presentation

Depending on whether you place your sales pitch in writing or verbally, the optimal procedure also differs. Because oral sales pitches are often experienced as the most challenging and have the strongest impact on closing a sale in the B2B environment, our tips on how to set up relate to a sales pitch in front of one or more business decision makers.

These tips apply whether you’re doing your presentation on-site or via a video conferencing tool like Microsoft Teams. If you do a lot of sales pitches, you should do at least some of your presentations remotely for time and cost reasons.

Entry

Don’t fall through the cracks. Depending on the setting, you will first introduce yourself or be introduced. Whether you already know the person you’re talking to or not, get their full attention first before presenting the benefits and features of your product. Two methods are best for this: questions and facts.

Questions: Do not ask a rhetorical question. Instead, open the conversation by asking with genuine interest. Try to better understand your interlocutor’s challenges and get to know their mindset.

Facts: Confront your interviewer with a surprising statistic, a provocative statement, or a bold promise that you will deliver on during the course of your sales pitch. This will win the curiosity of your audience. Important: The facts must address the pain points of the potential customers. Relevance is crucial.

Main part

Once you have gained their attention, don’t talk about your product right away, but first address the customer’s problems. Demonstrate that you understand the challenges and then transition to presenting your solution.

The most successful sales pitches use storytelling: has your startup faced similar challenges? Can you share a success story of an existing customer? Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to gain trust and sympathy.

When introducing the product, don’t focus on the features, focus on the benefits to customers. How does the product improve the customer’s everyday work? Use the information you’ve already gathered about the lead to make the benefits as customized as possible.

Don’t leave it at claims, provide evidence of your product’s performance.

Customer quotes and case studies describing positive experiences with your product
Expert testimonials from the scientific community that support the benefits of your product
Product comparison with competitors, highlighting the strengths of your product

Keep the sales pitch as short and compact as possible. It is not useful to mention all the features and benefits. Instead, focus on the strongest selling points.

Close

End your sales pitch with an offer to ask questions. In any case, you should invite your interview partners at the beginning to ask questions at any time so that you can directly address and resolve objections and concerns.

Answer any unanswered questions and discuss how to proceed. They should conclude with a clear call to action, for example:

Arrange a specific appointment to discuss details of the offer
Request to create a free trial account for a SaaS offering

If the desired action fails to materialize, proactively follow up.

Practical tips: What characterizes a successful sales pitch?

The structure is in place, the focus on customer benefits is clear. Yet many salespeople deliver only a mediocre sales pitch when it counts.

Here are a few set screws that can make all the difference.

Preparation

A convincing sales pitch is not created in five minutes, at least extraordinarily rarely. Take time to prepare the presentation. Research any existing information about the customer that might be helpful to your argument.

Create a written script for yourself for the interview process. Try to keep the product pitch as compact as possible. Imagine that for every word you delete, you get 50 euros. Shorten your presentation with this attitude.

Not only prepare the content of your sales pitch, but also pay attention to the way you present. What is your pitch? What is your body language like? What clothing is appropriate? These seemingly small things can make or break a business.

Be remarkable

Particularly when making major investment decisions, managers in B2B companies seek information from several providers. Creativity is needed to stand out from the competition. It’s not enough to present a well-designed pitch deck. Use new technologies, for example virtual or augmented reality.

Do you distribute industrial equipment? Have prospective customers put on smart glasses and view the full-scale plant from all sides. Show on the virtual object which functions are available and which adjustments are possible.

Are you presenting your product in a digital meeting? Then you can take your interlocutors into your operation via remote software and AR glasses and demonstrate the use of their product live. Prospects get a real user view through your glasses.

With AR and VR elements you trigger a wow effect with customers, with which your company will be remembered in any case.

Test, get feedback, use coaching

Delivering successful sales pitches is a practice. The theory is not too complicated, but it takes practice and empathy to ask the right questions, strike the right tone and choose the best application examples when in contact with the customer.

Create a script for your sales pitch and test it on 50 percent of your leads first. Compare the results with your previous standard procedure or a variant and successively develop your optimal procedure – which you adapt to the individual customer in each case.

Seek feedback from colleagues on where you can improve your conversational skills and reasoning. Compare your approaches and learn from mistakes as a team. Instead of relying on your intuition, align yourself with measurable results.

Tooltip: Gong.io

Use digital tools like Gong to quickly share best practices from your Sales Reps across the team and drive success rates up. The cloud application evaluates your successful sales pitches, creating a data-driven foundation of what works in conversations and what aspects of sales pitches salespeople struggle with. Sales reps can optimize their approach in an agile way, coaching becomes scalable, and product launches benefit from steeper learning curves.

Sales Pitch: 2 examples for inspiration

Startup pitches in front of investors are the supreme discipline of sales presentations. The time is shorter than in many B2B sales presentations, and the company does not yet have name recognition. This is precisely why a lot can be learned from successful sales pitches. Two examples…

The Nu Company

German company The Nu Company has mastered storytelling. The pitch starts with a question and then recalls all the problematic aspects of classic candy bars. Only after the founders describe the consumer’s pain in detail do they present their alternative – which is not only better for their own bodies, but also for the planet.

iCapsulate

Australian entrepreneur Kane Bodiam convinced three investors to invest in his coffee capsule startup on the TV show Shark Tank. He got $2.5 million in return for 22.5 percent of his company, making it the second-best deal in the history of the Australian TV show. The founder was less than charismatic, but he provided impressive facts about the company’s success to date and let investors experience his product firsthand. The fact that his data was so untenable and iCapuslate filed for bankruptcy a short time later only underscores what the use of credible data can achieve.

Conclusion: The DNA of successful product pitches

As different as successful sales pitches are, they have one thing in common: they didn’t happen overnight and they didn’t happen quietly – and they usually build on a functioning lead qualification process.

The better you know your potential customers, the easier it will be to convince them with your sales pitch. Digital tools are key to gathering the most comprehensive data possible on your leads and centralizing the insights. Tools like Pipedrive are evolving from insider tips to standard solutions, and more and more digital helpers are also available for conducting conversations. In the end, however, what is needed most of all is practical practice to improve one’s own sales skills. When it comes to sales pitches, quality follows quantity.

Your sales cycle drags on for months? Are you dissatisfied with the closing ratio of your sales staff? Then it’s time for our Digital Sales Workshop! Let us analyze your current hurdles and optimize your funnel from A to Z.

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