Bad sales pitches - and what to learn from them 1.

Happy 2020 everyone!

Starting off this New Year, I wanted to give an example of a really bad sales pitch I saw recently, what my key takeaways were from it and how I would advise them to improve. If this is a popular idea, then I might make a regular series of it.

Over the Christmas holidays, my wife & I were staying in our home town at my parents' place. On New Year's Day, I went to a shopping mall at a nearby town to catch up with my best friend for lunch and talk through 2019 & plans for the future.

My best friend has a slightly damaged mobile phone and so, while not yet in the market for a new phone, he is looking for ways to better protect his phone from further damage. Smartphones are fact of life today, both for personal and professional life, but are as breakable as similar technology - meaning that anyone who can help solve this problem can make money with the right pitch.

Mobile phones, while all but vital for business and life today, are as breakable as almost any other technology. If you can help solve this problem there is money to be made, but not if your sales pitch is terrible.

After we had our lunch, my friend & I went for a walk around the mall to continue talking and ended up walking past a pop-up stand in the middle of a walk way whose marketing promised "the next level of phone protection".

The stand looked extremely professional with videos and lots of examples of protected phones behind glass cases and other similar gizmos. There were about 4-5 members of staff hovering around the stand, wearing company branded t-shirts.

Being in the market for phone protection, my friend went up to politely speak to one of the member of staff. And that's where a terrible sales pitch began.

First of all, the sales rep looked really angry, almost resenting my friend for asking questions. Instead of a simple welcome like "Happy New Year, how can I help you?", their response was pretty surly, more like a "what do you want" attitude.

Secondly, another member of staff, who I assumed was the manager joined in the conversation. The manager also seemed angry, like my friend was bothering him.

At no point when speaking with any member of staff was my friend asked any real questions about what he was looking for - instead they jumped to assumptive closing questions like "what are you going to buy."

Another failure was that none of the members of staff had a phone that was protected by the company's system and they would be willing to demonstrate how it worked for them. One member of staff had a phone protected as such, but she refused my friends request to drop it on the floor to test it, while the manager claimed that he didn't have his phone with him - neither of which showed that the staff had any confidence in their own product.

Throughout this process, I had to step away from the stand as it started to make me cringe, and I desperately wanted to tell them how bad their pitch was. However, I realised that none of the staff were willing to listen and I'd be wasting my breath given their general attitude.

In the end, my friend didn't buy and certainly wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Talking with my parents later that day, it turned out that they had also visiting the same stand and had a very similar experience - eventually buying from another vendor who had asked them the right questions and gave them a great deal for protecting two phones.

Given this bad pitch, what advice would I have for them to improve?

- Don't forget the basics, like a good introduction and getting a clear understanding of what the potential buyer is looking to achieve as soon as possible. It might even mean politely

- If you've got a simple way to demonstrate the value of your product and/or service, then make sure to show it. In the example I gave, if they had had example demo phones to show how effective their protection was then my friend may have been convince to buy.

- Know when to ask the right questions and why. There's a reason why sales is both an art & a science, and in this example the staff jumping really fast into assumptive close questions when they had not identified my friend's needs.

-Overall, always remember that people buy from people - if you come across as angry or surly then it is much less likely they will buy from you.

For now, Happy New Year and Happy Selling!