Category: Sales and Marketing

Sales Pitch and Movie Trailers

We all may have heard that for a successful sale or a deal, your sales pitch has to be perfect and because of this many sales people forget that, selling is a process and not just “the pitch”.

Definitely, the pitch will get people excited but what about the complete product? It’s like focusing way too much on making the trailer and forgetting what the movie is all about. And let’s say that the trailer was indeed perfect but the movie was disappointing . How many times have we experienced that?

For a perfect movie to do great at the box office , the trailer has to be good but the movie has to be great. It has to have great characters, it has to have great music, and more importantly a great story. If these things don’t meet viewers expectations, after a couple of days, because of the bad reviews the movie will not be a success at the box office.

Likewise in sales, you have to have a great product, a great pitch, great marketing but more importantly the great value it will add to your customers lives.

We have heard about many surveys and research that suggest that the investors or your customers listen only to first 30 seconds of your sales pitch and rest is ignored which is true. But let’s say, the investor liked your pitch and would like to know more. Do you have a process in place to keep them excited? Do you have product that they think is different than the millions of other product already in the market? Do you add value? And if the answer to any one those questions is a No, then am sorry to say, but you are not getting the deal.

If only the sales pitch was important, why did J.K.Rowling had to go to several publishers before she finally got a publisher who agreed to publish her work? She had a same pitch to almost all the publishers even then, she was declined by many of them.

She really believed in her product and many publishers may be did not take a look at her complete work or may be, they did not see the value. Until eventually, one publisher liked it, believed in it and got the value in return when “Harry Porter” became a huge success.

Your sales pitch has be good and there is no question about that.But, are you delivering a great product and greater value, is what makes companies stand apart.

For instance, remember the super bowl advertisement of Apple in April of 1984? ( If you haven’t already, stop reading this and watch it on youtube now ) You will never experience an advertisement like that ever again. It was the advertisement that many say revolutionised Apple Inc. But the same people are undermining the product Apple had at the time, they undermine the value it brought to its customers. It was not just the advertisement, It was the product, and the value it added in its customers lives.

So, for all the sales people and startup owners out there, focus on the company or the brand or the product first and then worry about the “pitch” Because if you don’t have all of those in place, just your “pitch” is not going to save you.

The Complex Relationship of Sales and Marketing

How many times have we thought of Sales and Marketing as one single profession or a skill? How many times have you hung up the phone as soon as you hear the person on the other end pitching a product or a service? And how many times have you stayed away from a profession, just because the role was of a Sales Person or a Marketer and you didn’t know how exactly you would fit in?

Oxford dictionary defines Marketing as, the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising and Sales as, the exchange of a commodity for money; the action of selling something. If you read the definition of marketing again you would realise, there is sales in it. And this is where the confusion begins and this is where it gets hazy.

To differentiate between Sales and Marketing, imagine you are out on the streets and walk past a car dealership, you see lot cars parked inside the dealership behind those shiny glass panes. What you just encountered is Marketing and let’s say, you decide to walk into the dealership and you are approached by one the individuals wearing a suit and a tie who works there, welcomes you and starts the conversation, that’s Selling.

“The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers.”Jill Rowley

Over the last few decades we’ve seen both overlap though, where the marketer assumes that his job is to sell products and the sales person thinks he has to market his product to be able to sell. This is when we see the Sales and Marketing departments collide and get derailed from what their organisation’s ultimate objective was. We see marketing departments choosing a different path to that of what the organization wants and the sales department ends up marketing the potential customers relentlessly. In both cases it’s the organisation and the customers, who are impacted by this negatively. The customers are let down by constant bombardment of marketing emails, sales phone calls, endless sales pitches and unrelated marketing advertisements. All this impacts the organisation’s or the brand’s reputation and eventually their existence, as the customers start losing their confidence and trust.

“Sales and marketing alignment is about one shared goal: revenue that is delivered or over-delivered every quarter. There will always be tension, but that tension can be positive if there is a culture of clear expectations and communication.” Craig Rosenberg

For an organisation to succeed it is very important that both these vital levers work together instead of against each other. It is time for both these levers of the organisations to work separately but closely to their abilities. To define their roles again and come to the common grounds on their boundaries. It is important for both, the marketers and the sales people to start adding value to their customers in their own way instead of just trying to meet their respective quotas in any possible way. More importantly, it is time for the organisations to understand the difference in these two similar yet, different skillsets and get aligned to them.

In simple terms, Marketing is the process of making people arrive to your website, your store, your business and Sales is the process of making you understand what you are missing and showing the value of the product or service you offer with direct communication. Though they work closely, they are very different to one another as in the car dealership example I shared.

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