Death by Micro-Pitching

When it comes to breaking bad habits, there are not many that are tougher to break than micro-pitching.

What is Micro-Pitching?

Micro-pitching is the habit of pitching your solution multiple times during a conversation. It usually starts with you asking a question, which your prospect answers.

You then match one of your features or benefits to that answer and tell your prospect all about it.

Here’s a live example from a call I reviewed recently:

Salesperson: “What do you do to drive traffic to your website at the moment?”

Prospect: “We mainly spend money on search engine advertising.”

Salesperson: “Great. The reason I asked is that we have a licensing agreement with XYZ Ltd, which enables you to get star ratings and can increase your CTR by up to 17%.”

Prospect: “Oh right, interesting.”

The conversation continued with the same flow, and the prospect requested an email with some more information before escaping from the call.

It’s common that some salespeople use the same approach when handling objections, too, ultimately leaving them unresolved.

Why Salespeople Micro-Pitch

Some people micro-pitch because they’ve been poorly trained, whereas others do it because they’re not comfortable asking questions.

The urge to micro-pitch often comes from your healthy passion for your solution. The excitement to tell your prospect how you can help solve their pains or achieve their goals proves hard to resist.

The last thing I want to do is kill your passion, but I do want to persuade you to use it when the time is right.

Micro-Pitching is a killer.

It kills conversations, it kills presentations, and it kills rapport.

Your prospects want to feel like they’re in a dialogue with a professional consultant who cares about their business and wants to understand and help with their challenges.

When you micro-pitch, it not only becomes incredibly tedious for your prospect to listen to, but you begin to sound like a stereotypical salesperson from the 60s.

Not good.

How to Kill the Habit of Micro-Pitching

Instead, picture being a soldier at war trying to get to the front line with limited ammunition.

The front line is your presentation stage, and the ammunition is the contents of your presentation.

If you start firing too early, you’ll not be much use on the front line if you’ve used all of your ammunition, right?

The faster you understand that the best method of selling is by not selling, the more successful you’ll become in the sales profession.

Ask questions with the purpose of collecting the valuable information you’re going to use to deliver your compelling presentation when the time is right.

You’ll only be able to break the habit of micro-pitching if you replace it with a new one.

I highly recommend pinning a very visual sticky note or poster in your place of work to remind you to shut up and save the pitch for the presentation.

It will make you much more efficient on the front line.