I don’t know who are the fools and idiots who still teach that you have to have a great slide-deck and a strong compelling pitch when you meet a buyer, but:
They’re wrong, and I highly recommend you ignore them.
Because no matter how strong your pitch or how well-built your presentation:
If you’re only one degree off in your messaging, your entire narrative and value proposition will totally miss the mark, and your buyer will go "Very interesting. We’ll get back to you".
And whenever someone says that, rest assured – and disappointed, I suppose – that the deal isn’t going to happen.
For one thing: people don’t buy things that are interesting: they buy things that are helpful.
But also: People are far, far more inclined to pay for coaching and consulting services and dev work and projects, if they experience on a visceral level that you the seller actually understands them. And their problems, and their challenges, and how it all ties together.
But if you just show up with a deck and a pitch, you’re not giving people any sense of being understood – all you’re doing then is give them the feeling that you’re trying to coinvince them of something, which you are, and which you know doesn’t work.
Convince your brother to get a new job? Has never worked.
Persuade your friend to stop drinking? Yes he will, just one more beer, and then tomorrow…
Convince your kid to not drop out of college? Haha.
Convincing and persuading don’t work, because it tells the other person that you’re the boss over them and that they need to see your sound logic and reasoning, and that means you’re trying to rob them of their autonomy, and you bet people push back against that. And if you then try to do that in a pitch, and without having asked questions that help you really get your buyer?
Well then that’s exactly why your buyers ghost you and your deals don’t happen.
But if instead you diagnose their situation, and you analyse how and why their problem exists and what it’s consequences are, and you have a conversation about the different ways your solution will help them and unlock things that so far are blocked…
AND you do that in a way where you simply help them make a decision, and you leave that decision up to them, without the conceit of thinking that you know what’s best for them?
Well, that’s when people lean in, say "Tell me more" and happily book next meetings with you, right up to the moment they make a decision, and then very often that decision is "Let’s do it".
Not only is this a far more effective way to sell your work, it’s also the way nice people should operate. Because selling done based on learning your people and really getting your buyer, that’s what enables ethical, non-pushy providers to sell more without having to go against your values.
Put differently, a quality diagnosis is the thing that keeps your values intact and your deals moving forward. And it’s nice. Especially when at end of a sales conversation your buyer says thank you, and they mean it. Which I doubt they do if they say thanks after you’ve been pitching at them.
Anyway. Nice people ask, and sell without having to pitch.
And smart people run the Deal Diagnosis X-Ray on their deals, and smart people who want to invest in more sales, they check out the DDXRay subscription programme..