Equip your sales team with on-demand training to increase rep efficiency, drive revenue performance, and close more deals.
Request a DemoEmpower your team to learn whenever, wherever.
Create an onboarding bootcamp that allows your sales reps to ramp faster and hit quotas sooner.
Hit your revenue targets with a training program that focuses on coaching your reps on product knowledge and sales tactics.
Top global organizations from emerging businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises use WorkRamp to power their corporate learning strategy.
We believe that unleashing human potential - both inside and outside of the company- is the key to success.
Workramp.org provides technology, funding and time to help nonprofits expand their impact using learning technologies.
Sales reps deliver sales pitches daily. However, some reps are more skilled at these conversations than others.. They are able to form meaningful connections and leave lasting impressions on the prospects they meet with. Their sales pitches eventually result in more follow-ups and sales. So do they just have the gift of gab? Or can anyone learn how to deliver a great sales pitch?
Effective sales pitch training teaches sales reps to start conversations by learning about a potential buyer’s unique challenges. A good sales pitch training program sets realistic expectations for reps – that they shouldn’t expect to close a sale right away. Instead, they should regard it as an opportunity to learn more about the potential customer.
Through sales pitch training, organizations train their sales teams to:
Through sales pitch training, salespeople learn how to have honest conversations with prospects, connect with them on a human level, and help them to choose the right products/services.
A sales pitch is supposed to leave a lasting impression on the potential buyer and generate interest in your product or service — all in under two minutes. Some salespeople focus on the product, its price, its features, and its comparison with a competitor. Successful salespeople, however, make it all about the buyer.
This is the era of customer-centricity. Understanding a potential customers’ needs is not a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have. According to the State of the Connected Customer study by Salesforce:
A good sales pitch should clearly mention specific customer needs and how the product/service addresses them. It is a great way to start a sales pitch. For example, “In our experience, fast-growing ecommerce brands such as yours have to send out thousands of emails every day. Our platform can help you set up automated emails and manage your marketing efforts with ease, and save your time so you can focus on more strategic initiatives.”
In the above example (of a sales rep from an email marketing platform pitching to a buyer), we clearly identified the potential buyer’s need to send out emails and mentioned how our product fulfills it.
Sales reps can discover customer needs through:
After collecting this information, sales reps can incorporate it into their sales pitches.
Pain points are problems that a prospect faces in their business. Some of the frequent pain points customers face across industries can be grouped into:
Addressing at least one of these pain points in the sales pitch can help identify how your solution is more effective or a better fit for the prospect. For example, “Our customers love us, because our customer support is award winning. We have an excellent NPS score of 99.”
In the above example, we addressed two pain points: price and productivity.
Buyers expect sales reps to mention facts related to their industry, similar businesses, and their product itself to contextualize and showcase the value of a product. However, a sales pitch based on facts alone can get boring quickly.
Customers are more likely to remember how they felt during their interaction with a sales rep as opposed to remembering all the facts presented to them. With the help of storytelling, a salesperson can:
Storytelling in a sales pitch can be a bit tricky because sales pitches are short. However, using examples, analogies, and a bit of humor along with facts can really help a sales pitch stand out.
For example, “John, the email marketer at xyz company, told me the other day that they were able to hire an intern, thanks to the money we helped them save on their email platform. In fact, I have worked the numbers, and you can save up to $10,000 a year if you switch to our platform.”
In the above example, we named someone in the same industry as the potential buyer, told a story they could relate to, stated a fact, and doubled down on the financial pain point we identified earlier.
Asking questions during the sales pitch turns it into a conversation. It helps a sales rep learn more about the buyer’s needs, challenges, and pain points and gives them the opportunity to address them on the spot. For example, “What is your email marketing budget for this quarter?” or “Are they charging you based on the number of email send-outs? … Wow, that must really add up. We charge by the size of the database. You can plan as many send-outs as you want without worrying about the cost.”
In this example, we asked a question, acquired more information, and used that information to further differentiate our product.
A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for sales pitches. Using the elements of a good sales pitch, a salesperson can create basic templates for each buyer persona, but every sales pitch has to be unique based on the buyer’s unique situation. The pain points and priorities can be different for two very similar businesses. This means that salespeople need to know:
Accomplishing these tasks requires skills ranging from research and storytelling to communication and analytics. An ideal sales pitch certification program will use a blended learning approach to make sure each learner learns at their own pace. Blended learning uses a combination of live and recorded classes to train salespeople in all of these skills through a series of courses and exams. Here’s a template you can follow for your sales pitch training program:
The first course in the sales pitch training learning path should provide the sales rep with market context, a brief product overview, high-level value props of the product, and some challenges and major pain points common in the industry. It should also teach the sales rep how to do research on their own for specific customers.
This course should teach the sales reps how to deliver the sales pitch in one to two minutes. It should cover storytelling, humor, the importance of questions, and the ability to differentiate between must-have and nice-to-have information.
Follow the recorded course on basic presentation with an interactive session where sales reps can ask questions and get answers about presentation skills in real time. Ideally, this class will cover:
Learning these skills from an experienced sales coach in a live class can prove to be a transformational experience for sales reps and help them take their sales pitches from good to great.
Including a text-based guide that summarizes and repeats industry and product knowledge, as well as presentation skills, is a good way to bolster your sales reps’ knowledge. This can be a PDF document that covers everything included in the first three classes. The sales reps can access it any time they want and use it as their go-to document to quickly refer to concepts related to sales pitches and presentations.
Knowledge checks within the courses and tests after every course in the form of multiple-choice questions, video/audio recording submissions, pattern matching, hotspots, and more can help you gauge how well your sales reps are retaining information.
Knowledge checks test learners in an informal way and try to see if they can find answers within the course material. They check the learners’ comprehension of the course material throughout the course without making them feel like they have to get a certain score.
Quizzes and tests are more formal and detailed compared to knowledge checks; they rate the learners on their newly acquired skills. Using a combination of both throughout the sales pitch training program will help measure learner comprehension and engagement.
Having each salesperson deliver a mock sales pitch at the end of the certification path is a good way to see where they stand, identify strengths and weaknesses, and give them suggestions for improvement and feedback. This prepares them to try their newly acquired skills in a safe and controlled environment and helps managers gauge the effectiveness of the training program itself.
The mock presentation can serve as the final test, or you can have a second round of mock sales pitches combined with a quiz to complete the learning path and award each sales rep with a sales pitch certification.
WorkRamp helps sales enablement teams build detailed programs for sales pitch training to train sales reps effectively. It supports seamless transitions between live classes, knowledge checks, and recorded demos and makes it easy for managers to deliver feedback to each sales rep enrolled in the program.
Want to build an effective sales pitch training program for your team? Contact us today.
Give your employees the best-in-class LMS and improve your training outcomes. Reduce ramp time and churn. Request a demo today.