When a 'Pitch' is Not a 'Pitch'

Wikipedia defines a sales pitch as 'a line of talk that attempts to persuade someone or something'. Likewise an article in Forbes magazine last year on How to craft an effective sales pitch describes that 'a pitch typically conjures up images of one-way presentation, with the salesperson talking at a prospect'.

By contrast, a blog post from the HBR that formed one of their recent Management Tips of The Day took a different approach as it offered suggestions on how to "Win The Pitch" and "Tips from Mastercard's Priceless Pitchman". The 'Pitchman' in question was Kevin Allen, who was attributed with winning the Mastercard 'Priceless' campaign for McCann Erickson, and he reflected

We all make pitches every day - for a highly prized account; to a client who's reluctant to accept your scary proposal; for a sceptical CFO to loosen the purse strings; for a wary new team to believe in you.

There's no magic tricks or hypnotics to persuade people to do what you say. Rather, behind every decision the average person makes to buy something - whether a product or service, your argument or an idea - is an unspoken motivation. Tap this, connect to it, and you will have people saying yes.

It may seem crazy for an ad man to assert that we don't really 'persuade' anybody to do anything. I believe, however, that pitches are won - and people are willing to follow you - not because you've twisted someone's arm, but because people see you understand them, that you've applied the time and sensitivity to do so, and that you possess a special gift that can help them reach their heart's desire. And that, my friends, is priceless

FranklinCovey has been regarded by Training Industry.com as one of the top 20 Sales Training organisations globally for the past 5 years running. Yet we don't talk about 'closing' techniques or offer advice in the 'perfect pitch'. Rather, if Kevin Allen describes the 'what' of people feeling that you have genuinely understood them and believing that you can offer a solution that exactly meets their need, FranklinCovey provides the 'how' to do so.

• What we believe makes our approach distinctive is that it emphasises the ‘intent’ we have to help our clients succeed in a way we both feel good about (focusing on their agenda and their numbers), rather than a primary intent of selling to the client (which typically involves us focusing on our agenda and our numbers). Our experience is that when a client picks up on this intent it can transform the nature of the interaction between them and a consultant, creating a much more open dialogue and a foundation for effective collaboration.
• We then build on this with relevant tools and conversation patterns (which are strongly based in the science of Neuro Linguistic Programming), to effectively structure the client conversation. This ensures the consultant can match their intent to help the client succeed with the competence to do so - mutually exploring key business issues and their impact to ensure they are well placed to recommend a solution that exactly meets the clients needs.
• The approach we recommend also allows a consultant to keep with their intent and maintain the impression of helping their client succeed when it comes to presenting / advocating a solution so that this seems more like a ‘conversation with’ the client rather than a ‘pitch to’ them.