Without the work of your sales team, your company wouldn't get much new business. In fact, this is probably why you have an interest in providing your sales team with highly effective sales training that helps them tailor their sales pitches to acquire new accounts.

Here at HSI, we know you want to invest in your sales team, so we've included a number of skills-boosting courses in our selling skills video category. Each video in the sales category is specific, outlining topics your team needs to learn. For example, we cover DISC selling, handling objections, and sales methodologies. Today, let's go over how to tailor a pitch so it addresses customers’ needs. Similar to having a suit tailored to your personal style and measurements, your sales pitch should be tailored to the unique needs and pain points of your prospect.

Tell the Client's Story

The main focus of a sales pitch should be the client. There are three times when a salesperson presents a sales pitch to a prospective client:

• Upon cold prospecting
• During a solution presentation
• In a reminder pitch when attempting to close the deal

Your company's story, how it came to be, and why it's great today may seem like important bits of information to you, and they are. The standard picture of your corporate headquarters building may seem impressive to you but to the client, it says you are big, slow, and expensive. When your team custom-tailors its sales pitch, the main focus of the conversation should always be the client. This theme should be the main focus throughout all three of the meetings mentioned above and be infused in everything you say.

Target Pain Points

Your sales team must always do its research before entering a sales pitch. The “research” information used during a cold call pitch might come from the prospect’s website, from Google, or from a number of sales intelligence applications. This information might indicate that the client is experiencing pain that your solution can address. Using this research to tailor a prospecting email, voicemail or introductory conversation will more likely catch someone’s attention than a generic message.

The research used during a solution presentation should come from the investigative work completed during a thorough discovery conversation. These could be pain points that the client revealed directly to you, and you should mention those pain points during your solution presentation to show how your solution would address their pain.

Use all of your research information when attempting to close the deal by reminding the client of their pain points, and pointing out what their pain is costing them in time, money, and effort. The longer they take to decide on your solution, the more it will cost them. You and your solution are there to save the day.

Walk the Walk

Don't just tell clients how your company can fix their problems - show them. Come to the sales pitch armed with demonstrations, facts, figures, and success stories. Using their pain points and making direct comparisons with other similar clients that successfully used your solutions, you can help the people in the meeting envision what their future looks like with your company. You basically want to show that you're not selling smoke and mirrors: You're selling a proven system or product that can absolutely help the client.

Listen, Feel and Just Talk

Some people make decisions based on evidence and logic while others look to their feelings and intuition. Some people make decisions based on how it will affect themselves while others look to see how the decisions will affect those around them.

Target each type of person, as there are bound to be both in your client's party. Draw on their emotions by painting the big picture and sharing a grand vision you can help them accomplish. Target the logical people by showing data and giving examples of what you've done for other clients. Point out how happy your solution will make others working around them. If you’re unsure who you might be dealing with, check out the HSI series on DISC selling.

Just as important is how you deliver information. Don't look at your sales pitch as a speech, but rather a conversation. When you have a conversation with someone, you listen carefully to what they say, then respond. Do the same in your sales pitch, and keep the tone approachable, helpful and caring. Let the client control the vast majority of the conversation.

Tailoring a pitch to every individual client is one sales skill your team needs. They can learn that skill and many others to help boost their numbers and abilities through targeted training. And that's where HSI's award-winning sales content comes in.

Tailor Your Sales Training

When you work with a company like HSI, you can access all of our selling skills videos to create your own sales training program. We offer courses for your rookies and veterans, for all stages of the sales process, for distance selling, enterprise accounts, and much more. This allows your sales managers to tailor the training to the specific needs of each salesperson. Request a free trial to access all of our sales training videos.

Additional Resources

• 4 Quick Tips to Uncovering Customer Needs
• How to Succeed in Relationship Building
• Selling Skills Training Videos
• Selling Skills Training Topics

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on March 18th 2015, and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.