Practice your sales pitch
Practice your sales pitch
“Ensuring your sales pitch is perfect to increase sales, drive forward interest and make sure you are the one getting hired”
Welcome back to the blog and I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s post about ensuring you lead your client to the proper conclusion (which of course is buying your products and using your services) and we are continuing on the theme of sales today and we are going to look at one of the most important parts of your career as a trivia host….the sales pitch.
Without an effective sales pitch you are going to find yourself without any sales…it is that simple. Therefore without an effective sales pitch you can forget about your technology, you can kiss goodbye to the amazing questions you have written and you can start looking for a new career. Bookings will very very rarely find their way to your lap and instead you need to develop a key sales pitch.
One vital element of this is not only devising the pitch but also practicing it to make sure it works well! And that is what we are going to look at on the blog today J
Practice your sales pitch – Plan and prepare
The first thing you need to consider is the planning and preparation. Have a good long think about what makes your business unique, what is going to sell you and what do you want to say. Give yourself a few days to think about a structure, look at what other trivia hosts say about themselves and make sure you have a checklist and a plan in mind! Failure to prepare and you should prepare to fail!
The key here is to identify within 5 sentences what makes you and your service special and unique. Every trivia entertainer is different, but what makes YOU stand out? Identify it and write it down as part of your planning and preparation for a good sales pitch.
Practice your sales pitch – Taking the time and effort
If you are just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, then you are not taking the proper time and effort to do what is necessary to be successful. Making a great website and putting out some filers are proactive and have good results, but it simply is not enough. What you also should be doing early on is giving yourself time and effort to contact people directly and set appointments every week. This will involve some cold calling. If a meeting is weeks away, plan to have it ready well in advance as rushing to complete it will result in a rushed job and this will be majorly negative on your overall success. The more effort you put in, the more time you take the customer will see it and giving yourself more time gives you more time to practice. The more people you contact the more you can be assured of success.
Practice your sales pitch – Thinking outside of the box
Now, here is the key one. Practice doing different things in the pitch. Don’t just do a straight up “this is why I am awesome” style pitch where you stand reeling off line after line about how great you area. Think of how to make your sales pitch unique and then practice it. I am not just talking about unique content (such as the use of videos and testimonials etc) but how about actually getting the people involved? Get the customer involved in the game, show them how fun it is and practice what you’re going to say. This will allow them to see what you are offering firsthand rather than just imagine it.
Practice your sales pitch – Testing it on Family and friends
I would also advise as well as practicing it with yourself, you would be very well suited to actually giving it a dry run on family and friends. Other trivia hosts would be ideal as they know the business but the simple fact is they can steal idea. A friend, a colleague….get them to give feedback, ask questions and find flaws in what you are saying and then it prepared you for what the client might say or do. This will also give you that much needed confidence boost of talking in front of people as I can assure you that its more nerve wracking in front of friends so you will then find the presentation to employer a doddle.
Practice your sales pitch – Evaluating and reflecting
Finally, the key to making and practicing your sales pitch is if you ensure that you evaluate and reflect on how it went. Don’t leave this until months later, do it the hours after. What went right? What felt wrong? What questions were asked? Have a good think about which bits the customer looked interested in and what bored them. Use that information to further plan and practice your future pitches. Also, think about the outcome and you could even ask the customer for feedback. Why didn’t you get the gig? Think about it and then act on it and make sure you practice not to do it again.
Reflecting should also include an understanding why a client has hired you in the past. Don’t know? Then ask them. Ask them “What did you like about my initial presentation that helped you to decide on my services?” It is a legitimate question, and your client will always give you an answer. Perhaps they like the trivia game system you use. Perhaps it was your price, or your willingness to work with them, or customize the show. Perhaps it was your persistence or offer for a free sample night. There may be many things that swayed the client towards you, and all you have to do is ask. Once you know the answer, compare that with other client’s responses too. This then gives you a clear picture of your strengths for you to grow even further from.
This doesn’t just work in a negative sense as you can also look at what was a success….why did you achieve? What really made them want to hire you and why did they choose to do so? Then build on your strengths ongoing.
So, let us just recap on what we have discussed on the key theme and crucial aspect of planning and preparing your pitch –
- Make sure that you take time to plan and prepare
- Never assume they have knowledge of anything, take time to explain
- Keep it brief and plan for questions
- Test it on people, practice it in front of an audience
- Always look back on failed and successful pitches and think what you could have done
All in all, you can now see why the sales pitch is so vital. Without it you are going to find yourself struggling massively in all areas. Without a pitch there is no income and without income you have no business. All will contribute to your failures as a trivia host and remember we don’t want failures, we want successes so have a good think about it and get that sales pitch right.
Thank you for reading today and hopefully over the last few days you have picked up some useful tips on sales. I know sales is a part of the business people often struggle with and don’t think much about. Sales drives your business and until you can do an effective pitch your business will struggle to get off the ground.
If you have any requests or other such information then please let us know. We are always happy to receive feedback and requests so keep them coming.
Until then, happy trivia hosting!
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