Pitching The Pitch, Ditching The Script
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter F. Drucker
Hi Persuader,
What is a pitch?
It’s an attempt at a logical series of steps, to arrive at an outcome.
What is a script?
See: pitch. Same thing.
Two ways scripts/pitches can be useful – number one, a script can be useful to learn something new. Number two, it can be used to persuade the writer of that script, because that’s who it’s really designed to influence.
Otherwise, both are useless.
Now here’s the alternative route that you will find a zillion times easier, more effective, and more efficient…
The ultimate alternative to scripts and pitches: Persuasion.
What is persuasion?
Persuasion is understanding the customer so well that the product or service fits him/her and sells itself. It’s rapport, and it’s giving someone exactly what they want.
What do you want the most? I’m going to give it to you. If you perceive that I’m going to give you what you want, and it is exactly what you want, and it makes you feel really good, and you are really excited about it, are you going to buy it?
Yes.
It’s like stepping into you, and giving yourself the idea that this is what you want to do, and so since it came from you, you say “yes, of course, I want to do it”.
Sometimes, pitches are useful to give you an overall series of points that you might want to cover, and so for that reason you might just want to make a list of things you want to touch on.
For example, if your prospect is going to sign an agreement, they need to know what’s in the agreement, they need to know what they’re agreeing to, so there are a few points that maybe you need to make sure to bring up.
And (now, here’s where persuasion comes in) you’re always going to bring those points up in light of what?
Your prospect’s CRITERIA. Their highest values. What they want.
We use criteria elicitation so that we can marry their criteria to our product. That’s our sole intention in life. If your criteria equals my product, are you going to own it?
Yes.
If I want a relationship with you and I equal every single desire you have, are you going to have a relationship with me?
Yes.
If what you want in life– desires and goals–are identical to mine, are we going to be best friends? Are we going to really understand each other?
You bet.
Our job is to marry the person’s values with our product/service, (or with ourselves, if that’s what you’re selling – and to some extent you are always selling yourself).
That’s exactly what we’re trying do. We do it with intention, rapport, intention, criteria, intention, marriage, bringing it all together.
Everything you say, everything you do, everything you are about when you’re with that person is putting your stuff into their criteria, making them see how their criteria is exactly what you have, you are the only place where they can get that criteria met. That’s it, that’s all there is to this.
If you were using a pitch before reading this, fine. But now that you have even the tiniest most basic understanding of persuasion given this context, it’s time to ditch the pitch.
Tell us about your successes in ditching the pitch! Post a comment to this post. And while you’re at it, make sure you know exactly how to elicit your prospect’s criteria.
If you don’t know about criteria elicitation, or even if you think you know, you need to check out Persuasion Factor and become the very best at eliciting your prospect’s criteria.
Until Next Time,
Kenrick E. Cleveland
