By Kate Kingston, President, Kingston Training Group

In part II of this article, we covered the research you should perform before reaching out to your prospects.

Once this research is completed, you’re ready to craft your pitch. The actual pitch should be about 60-70 seconds, and ideally include information about the prospect, their executive responsibility, and their company, demonstrating an understanding of how they make money. Use vertical content about what they proprietarily print, fax, archive, scan, and retrieve. Use correct terminology when speaking with different vertical markets; there is a difference when speaking with a law firm versus a medical practice. If you were talking to a law firm, you would not refer to their clients as “patients” as you would with a medical facility.

By articulating just how a prospect would actually use your solutions establishes the fact that you understand their business model, which proves that you are asking for a consultative meeting to share industry best practices. Specifically, how they can use business technology process changes to drive their company towards more security, efficiency, compliancy, and profitability. If delivered correctly, this content will land net new meetings with a decision maker every 20-25 phone calls/cold calls, emails, or LinkedIn prospecting touches.

At KTG, we always suggest that bringing that content into the conversation in your first meeting will persuade the prospect to allow for discovery or an assessment to be conducted. As you are preparing to start your pitch in front of your prospect, lay out all your research on their conference table, if possible. This will showcase to the prospect that you pay attention to the details of their company, as well as in your own work. You can and should refer to the information that you brought to lead the conversation in the meeting (with vertical discovery questions), since you have researched what they need to compliantly archive, easily access, and more cost-effectively reproduce. Using their vernacular and acronyms will also prove your value and set you apart from your competition.

Successful, productive, money-making sales executives in 2018 are those who understand that a prospective customer is looking for more than a machine that makes copies; they are now looking for a “technology partner” that is going to act as their virtual CIO. This means you must be prepared to step up your preparation and research when identifying those companies that are worth your time and effort to prospect. This higher level of prospecting and selling will set you apart from your competition, prepare you to be a valuable consultant to your prospect, and guarantee that you will sell much more in 2018.

Kate Kingston is President of Kingston Training Group. Contact her at (646) 831-5184 or [email protected]