Pitching your business is the penultimate stop on a windy road to closing your next business deal. You either get the sale or you don’t. Whether you do depends on many situational considerations, some within your span of control, others well outside. Factors such as your delivery, tone and personal rapport with the client are all elements you can positively influence, whereas their economic circumstances, stress and long-term objectives are not.
Suffice to say, not every potential buyer necessitates the same approach. Some people like to dive into the weeds about products and services while others are happy just understanding the bottom line. One thing, however, is for certain: You never know who you’re talking with until you’re talking with them, which means you need to be prepared for anything.
Here’s another approach to generating your business pitch (a rather creative one, if I may say so myself): think of it in terms of social media platforms. There are the robust delivery types such as Hubspot and Hootsuite, and short, concise approaches such as Twitter.
Whatever your preferred social media weapon of choice, there’s an equally valuable “pitch style” associated with it. Here is the entrepreneur’s social media guide to crafting the ideal business pitch:
The “Twitter pitch.”
This is the 30-second elevator pitch that should leave your audience begging for more. You want to present just enough information to induce enough curiosity that it compels your soon-to-be client to “click” on the solution you just pitched because it answers their business needs.
The “business card pitch.”
Business cards are good for two things (well, two that I can list here): contact info and slogans. After all, who really wants to carry around a Rolodex of business cards when there are a multitude of apps to do that for you on your smartphone?
When I receive a business card, I save the contact info and look for a slogan or one-liner that will help me remember the business and the individual. For example, if your specialty is talent management and somebody looks at your business card, a catchy slogan might be: “I create company muscle.” Huh? Exactly.
If somebody doesn’t want to know more about that slogan, then intellectual curiosity may not be their “thing.” Remember, if there isn’t anything worth remembering, then neither is the business.
The “WordPress pitch.”
After getting your foot in the door, it’s time to write your blog pitch. This is a longer, three- to five-minute version of who you are, what you do and why. Think of the sequence like this: challenge, impact, results.
In other words, you want to answer the immediate question of why your company exists and what spurred its founding. Next, explain how your services fill the gap caused by the aforementioned challenge. Finally, follow up with an example of how your company resolved a similar challenge in the past, but be sure to focus on benefits rather than specific products or services you’re selling (you don’t want to come across as just another salesperson).
If something doesn’t feel right, choose a “plugin” — something to fill the gap and stall until reinforcements (i.e. colleagues) arrive.
The “Hubspot pitch.”
This is the motherload. When you want to utterly stun the client and go into “full-blitz mode,” you give them the Hubspot dump. Hubspot, for the uninitiated, is a one-stop shop for everything you could possibly want, ranging from lead generation to analytics, scheduling and hosting. For the Hubspot pitch, you are in full attack mode: charts, graphs and Powerpoint, likely accompanied by one or two other heavy hitters from your company, such as the CEO or president, who can help move the proverbial ball across the goal line.
It’s good practice to build up your arsenal. You never know when opportunity will knock at your door. More so, you don’t know who will be doing the knocking.
