Strap a rocket-pack to your sales pitch!
Selling consultancy, training or any other service where imparting knowledge is a key part of the marketing process often requires several sales pitches with no guarantee of success. This is because a large part of the prospect’s decision making is based on emotional triggers such as ‘I like what I’m hearing, ‘I feel I can trust them’ and ‘I feel there’s a connection here’.
Selling such services requires two key ingredients:
instilling a sense that you have the answers to whatever problem they want to resolve
instilling a sense of trust that you are the one to guide them through the process of understanding and implementing those answers.
Many consultants would rather that the sales process was not necessary and that prospects simply phone them and convert themselves into loyal customers.
The main problem with the sales pitch is that it usually takes several interactions with the risk that you might be wasting your time.
How to do a lot more with much less Of course, what you really want is to fire up that feel-good factor and trust with the minimum amount of time and effort. There are two simple things you can do to accomplish this:
Give your pitch a ‘wow’ factor so you switch on as many emotional light bulbs as possible.
Make your website an extension of that process so it continues to build those emotional connection points while you’re focused on doing paid work.
Your personality plays a critical part in building trust and creating that feel-good factor but we’re talking about strapping an automated rocket-pack onto all that appeal of yours.
Educational researchers have shown that 83% of human learning occurs visually. But there’s more: visual narrative – also known as visual storytelling – is central to increasing the effectiveness of a pitch.
The imagery you use requires as much careful thought and consideration as the words, often even more so because an effective image can condense a thousand carefully articulated words into a single moment of insight that will make the prospect light up like a Christmas tree. And for you it’s ‘job done’.
Yes but...
Where is this visual communication supposed to come from? It’s a real drag to find appropriate clip art or stock images and most of the time they just don’t do the trick - they don't really communicate what you wan to say and you have to select from different art styles making it look messy. As a consultant what do you tell your clients to do if they lack the required skills and time to do a certain task? Work on your business, rather than in it. Delegate or outsource your visual communication and marketing needs to someone who is expert at visual communication. This will leave you time to focus on being a brilliant consultant.
