2019: Your Year to Chase Bats in Your Kitchen

Enticing folks to commit to a demo of your product or chasing down prospects for a solid commitment at this early stage of the year can sometimes feel a tad fruitless and frustrating. 

Kind of like the classic video of chasing a bat in your kitchen:

Especially on a Monday morning. 

But that effort does indeed pay dividends, just like it did with our friend Derry in the video. 

Now you do eventually catch that damn flying rat…in spite of the all the “helpful encouragement and feedback" you get from those around you…not to mention the obstacle of the dog pissing on the floor that sometimes encumbers your activity (man…so many good metaphors in this video on what we do for a living, don’t you think?)

But let’s not forget that all those bat chasing activities will indeed build your business into a juggernaut armed with buckets of life-changing results for your clients.

Let that sink in for a moment. 

One seemingly fruitless, bat-chasing phone call at a time. 

One conversation at a time. 

One demo at a time. 

…equals a real business.

…equals client amazement.

…equals a real sales career.

...equals personal goals achieved. 

One frenetic bat chase at a time. 

Empires are built in just that way. 

You may ask, “How can I even think of building an empire when the prospects I talk to don’t give me time to explain what I do or what I sell? They blow me off and tune me out before I even get past who I am and what I do.” 

The simple answer is that it your story telling ability probably sucks…or at the least needs a wheel alignment. 

Since the publishing of our groundbreaking sales book Pitch Anything and the tens of thousands of our readers and subscribers including the hundreds who tune in to our Facebook Live pitch breakdowns every Thursday, we find that most unsuccessful sales pitches lack four key ingredients:

1. Curiosity 
2. Intrigue
3. Humor 
4. Tension

More on how to structure a proper pitch later. Before we work on the actual mechanics of a solid pitch, we should start with addressing a basic and typical speed bump first: the uncertainty, hesitancy, and lack of confidence in your voice about pitching your product. 

So let’s try a quick exercise: How big is your company? 

$10MM in rev a year? $25MM $50MM? $100MM+?

Whatever your company size, here’s the way to think about it to give yourself a mental edge as we start this new year: Let’s say your company was founded in 2014 and first year revenues were ~$2MM

2015: revenues were then ~$6MM

2016: $10MM

2017: $15MM

2018: $22MM

That means that your combined revenues since “founding” are ~$55MM. 

Now when you are speaking with a prospect on the phone and presenting your company for the first time, realize that you then have a hammer-crushing $55MM of social proof on your side during the pitch! 

So do you sound and act and tell a story like you have $55MM in your corner? 

You may have only just started with the company…or even been there for a year or two. But understand that you have the combined efforts of the many bat-chasers before you that sell for a $55MM behemoth. Your prospect should feel your million-dollar presence and that you represent tens of millions of dollars and thousands of thrilled clients during your pitch. 

Developing a mindset around proper story telling and crafting a compelling narrative with a proven sales methodology is key for you to have a successful 2019. And it all starts with having confidence like you have $55 milly behind you. 

But unfortunately in our profession there are still too many of us starting a pitch by leading with and explaining mere product features and benefits. It’s lazy, it’s boring, and frankly, it’s no fun to deliver. This way of selling is wildly ineffective yet still taught by so many “meh” and complacent sales leaders even today.

The folks who cling to this fixed sales mindset are true Sales Tourists. They seek not to work on their craft or test new sales theories in the wild, but instead focus on complaining about a lack of MQLs or how disappointed they are in the newly rolled out commission plan. 

In other words, true small minded thinking. 

When you are making your pitch, tell a compelling story that has a distinct narrative arc - a Big Idea that creates Intrigue and clearly explains value to the folks we are pitching. 

But why should I adopt the Big Idea?

Because when you describe your product features and benefits too early in a pitch, your prospect will stop listening to you and “check out.” They inherently know that everything that follows is going to be programmed and predictable behavior. They’ve seen and heard it a thousand times before, from a thousand of other mediocre and lazy tourists in our profession and therefore can see it coming from a mile away…they fill in the gaps of the story which they already have seen thousand times from a thousand vendors and this gives them total control over you. You then start to act needy and subservient and…‘snap’…just like that, it’s over.  

I know what some of you are thinking, “But if I just focus on showing the benefits of (my product), people will want it.”

WRONG.

I guarantee you that Disney won’t show us the ending of the new Avenger’s movie before we’re supposed to see it. So why would you do this to your “audience?"

Pushing features and benefits too soon does nothing to enhance your status, intrigue or value…in fact, it destroys it. It also tells your prospects that you are selfish…that you are more interested in talking about what’s important to  you, not what’s important to them. There is no drama or curiosity and, most importantly, there are no stakes in the game. 

But it takes effort to craft a compelling story or Big Idea. It takes burning lots of cycles (and maybe even some good leads) and the courage to test your evolving pitch in the wild. And because it takes extra work, it’s easy to see how so many would much rather slip into a coma of complacency in our profession. They aimlessly drift from port to port without a rudder hoping to one day bob into a port of prosperity. You know the type: It’s only January 7th and they are already complaining for all to hear about the market, the leads, the new comp plan and are counting down the days until the next holiday. 

More tourists. 

And from my experience, Sales Tourists sell only one way: Lazily…so feature/benefit selling fits their needs nicely. 

It’s like our Irish friend Derry sitting on a chair holding up a net hoping the elusive bat will eventually fly in. 

Holding tight to the idea of leading with the features/benefit method of selling is sowing seeds of disappointment in your sales career. Rather, your prospects expect a proper sequenced, intrigue-laden narrative from you. If you don’t take them on that kind of journey, prospect confusion rules the day. 

Think of it like owning a movie theater where you start a 2-hour movie near its ending and then expect the audience to parse together ideas and imagine what happened in the unseen earlier scenes. 

Boom! The big weaponized death-moon-thing blew up and a few guys and an oversized cat-man flew away in their funny looking spaceship at the last minute. 

Huh? Who are they? Why should I care? I didn’t know overgrown cats could fly. It’s confusing, it’s frustrating and it doesn’t align with my expectations as a moviegoer. Thumbs down!

Bad sequencing (using Feature/Benefit selling) kills deals!

At Pitch Industries, here are the three strands of DNA underlying every pitch that you need to be aware of:

People want what they can’t have

People chase what moves away from them

People only place value on what is difficult to obtain

By being mindful of these three philosophies, this means truly challenging yourself to tell a better story in a way that is not cheesy, desperate, or long winded. It means being mindful of your voice (quality of headset, clarity of speech, no slang, no supplication, etc), your pacing, your tone, and even your pauses. 

Think about the last call you finished. Would you nominate yourself for an Academy Award for your performance? Or would you have walked out of a movie you are starring in because the story, the editing, the sound, and the acting were so bad? 

You simply have to want to get better. You have to want to pursue excellence in your craft. The best time to start this would have been 2018. The second best time to start this is today. 

Lastly, assume for a minute that the leads, the systems, the product, your leadership, your comp plan…everything outside of your control in 2019…will not getting any better. You have to start with what you can control: And that is your well crafted and constructed pitch and your compelling story. 

Armed with that, the bats will never make a mockery of you like they almost did to poor Derry. 

See you at the top!