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Sales presentations: templates, examples and ideas on how to present like a pro

A good sales presentation is more than a simple pitch, a demo or a list of facts and figures. Done well, at the right time in your sales process , it’s a tool for getting your prospects’ attention, drumming up excitement and moving prospects toward a buying decision.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to use the power of storytelling to drive decision-making and close more deals. We’ll also cover the fundamental elements of an effective sales presentation strategy, what to include in your sales decks and practical ideas on how to deliver them.

What is a sales presentation?

A sales presentation is a live meeting where your team showcases your product or service and why it’s the best option for your prospect.

Although the terminology differs from company to company, a sales presentation is not always the same as a sales pitch.

A sales pitch is what your sales professionals do all day long, on the phone, over Zoom or in person with clients.

A sales presentation (although it’s still a sales pitch) is a point-in-time event that usually happens when your sales team is trying to close a more lucrative deal. It’s not a simple phone call, as it often involves a meeting and a demo.

Because you’re likely presenting to a group of senior decision-makers and executives, sales presentations require ample prep time and coordination across multiple team members.

Key takeaways from this sales presentations article

Deliver effective presentations: Make your sales presentations compelling with storytelling, effective slide decks, tailored content and strong delivery techniques. Benefits of great presentations: Sales presentations grab attention, excite prospects and drive decision-making, helping close more deals by showcasing your product’s value. Pipedrive’s tools, including customizable sales dashboards and Smart Docs , help you create professional, tailored presentations that enhance your sales strategy. Try Pipedrive free for 14 days .

How (and why) to use storytelling in your sales presentation

Use stories in your presentations to help people remember and relate to your brand.

Statistics, facts and figures can help when you’re trying to persuade a prospect to become a customer, but they’re more impactful if you can frame them with a memorable story.

For example, tell a story about a customer who faced the same challenges as your prospect and supplement it with powerful data, they are more likely to listen and want to know more.

Human beings have a deep relationship with storytelling. Stories move, teach and, in a sales context, persuade audiences.

Chip Heath, a Stanford professor and the co-author of Made to Stick , demonstrates the importance of storytelling by doing an exercise with his students. He divides them into groups and asks them to deliver a one-minute persuasive pitch based on data he’s just shown them.

After the pitches are delivered, he asks the class to jot down everything they remember about them. Although most students use stats rather than stories, 63% remember the stories, while only 5% remember an individual data point .

The stickiness of stories makes them a useful tool for developing a sales presentation outline. They help prospects understand and remember the key points of the presentation and your product.

Thomas Dredge Sales Manager, Particular Audience

Start with a problem (and a deadline)

Your presentation is about the solution you’re offering your prospects, but it shouldn’t start with that solution.

Instead, lead with the problem your solution was designed to solve.

“ Value selling is key,” says Bradley Davies, business development at Cognism . “It is important to understand your buyer and tailor their journey to what you can do for them.

“First, you need to understand what is motivating them to have a discussion, which allows you to identify their pains and present how your offering solves their pains. Everything presented to a prospect should be based on the value for them specifically.”

You might choose to tell a story that positions your product as the hero, helping the customer vanquish a villain: their pain point.

Your story should be tailored to the pain points of the prospects in the room. For example, a change to their business, industry or the technology they use.

“If an element of your offering is not relevant, then don't distract them from the important features. It will keep them engaged and help to build their user story,” adds Bradley.

Recommended reading

Digging deep to determine customer pain points and make the sale

Create a sense of urgency around your product: It’s a solution to their problem, but if they don’t act now, they could miss an opportunity. Tell a story about what might happen if your prospect doesn’t change, framing the consequences of inaction.

Focus on outcomes

You’ve outlined the problem and, if you’re doing your job, your audience is nodding along. Now it’s time to start talking about the solution.

However, that doesn’t mean you should launch into the features and benefits of your product just yet.

Rather than presenting your product, a good sales presentation draws a picture of what life could look like for a customer once they start doing things differently. How will their workload or productivity improve? What will they be able to do with additional time and resources? How will they reduce spending and increase revenue?

From there, introduce your solution and the features that can make this brave new world possible. Do this in a few ways:

Position your features against the old way of doing things

Present those features as “superpowers” that will solve your prospect’s problems

Compare those features to competitors’ features

Quantify the value your features bring vs. the cost of doing nothing

Use a combination of some or all of the above

Creating a winning sales presentation slide deck

Most sales presentations include a slide deck to deliver facts, case studies and statistics that convey the value of your solution.

Create your sales pitch deck in an application like PowerPoint or Google slides to ensure your presentation is visible to everyone in the room (or in a virtual setting).

The best sales decks have a few key elements:

A great cover image or opening slide. Like the story you open your presentation with, your cover slide should grab your audience’s attention.

Data and key points . Charts, graphs, infographics, quotes and other information back up your presentation. Your slides should support your presentation by visualizing data, not repeating what you’re saying. You can get metrics from third-party sources or (if appropriate) from your own sales dashboard .

Testimonials and case studies from other customers. Quotes and success stories from or information about other customers, preferably in the same industry as your prospects, will act as social proof and go a long way to backing up your claims.

Competitive context. In all likelihood, your product isn’t the only one a potential customer is evaluating. Savvy sales professionals take the opportunity to proactively communicate how their product stacks up to their competitors’ and anticipate objections.

Customized content. While it might seem tempting to use the same content for every presentation, you should personalize your presentation for each meeting. You might want to use your prospect’s brand colors, find data specific to their market or industry, or reference an earlier exchange. You can find ready-to-use customizable sales decks through a graphic design app, such as Canva.

A glimpse into next steps. Give your prospects an understanding of what new customer onboarding looks like with a slide that includes a direct call to action offering next steps. For some companies, the training and customer support experience can be a value proposition in and of itself.

A note about text in your sales deck : Keep the slides simple and light on text. Your prospects don’t want to look at a wall of words to read. According to data from Venngage , 84% of presenters use visual data in their presentations – and for good reason: You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with text as they listen to you, look at your sales deck and watch the demo.

When you do include text, ensure you use a font (and font size) that can be easily read by everyone sitting in on your presentation.

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What else to bring to your sales presentation

Now that we’ve discussed the story elements of a sales presentation and your slide deck, what else should you bring to the meeting?

Most sales presentations are in-person affairs and include visual elements like a sales deck, handouts or even an in-person demonstration of the physical product. Here are a few things to think about including in your pitch.

13 examples of sales collateral you need to drive revenue

The product.

Nothing sells a product like seeing it in action.

Take Scrub Daddy, a sponge that changes shape depending on the heat of the water. When Aaron Krause, Scrub Daddy’s founder and inventor, presented the product on Shark Tank in 2012 , he demonstrated the sponge cleaning dirty kitchenware and greasy countertops. He also used bowls of water and two 10-pound weights to show the sponge’s amazing morphic abilities.

The tactic paid off: Scrub Daddy partnered with Lori Greiner for $200,000, in return for 20% equity in the business and is now considered one of Shark Tank’s most successful products.

Not all products are easy to demo, so you may have to improvise.

With a physical product, think of the perfect environment for a demo. What would show the product at its best?

With a digital product, make sure you have the technology on hand to show what your product can do (and check beforehand that the tech works). If it’s a mobile app, have your prospects download it. If it’s a platform, consider producing recorded or interactive product demos that can be embedded in your sales presentation.

For items that are too big to be brought in or which are location-specific, you may have to rely on a video as part of the presentation.

7 steps to putting together a brilliant sales demo

Leave behinds.

Depending on the nature of your solution, you may want to have materials you can leave with the prospects in the room.

This can be as simple as contact information or sales literature you pass out at the end of the presentation. It can also be something that’s part of the presentation, like a QR code that allows them to download the demo on their phones. Whatever format you choose, make sure the material is concise and to the point.

Tailoring your sales presentation to speak to your audience

Once you develop a strong sales deck template, it’s tempting to use it over and over with your target audience. Remember, personalization is essential in sales.

During lead generation , prospecting and sales calls, you know that prospects are more interested in buying if your pitches are tailored to them. It’s the same with your sales presentations, especially if you have an unusual prospect.

Let’s say your product is a CRM that’s normally used by sales organizations, but a human resources department is interested in using it to create a recruiting pipeline.

You wouldn’t use a sales deck with sales-related examples to sell it during the presentation.

Instead, you’d research talent acquisition challenges, ask your product department to create a template or a demo aimed at recruiting and build your sales deck accordingly.

Different industries have unique challenges and opportunities. It’s your responsibility to tailor your value proposition and key bullet points accordingly.

“To craft the perfect sales presentation pitch,” advises Danny Hayward, Sales Manager at Unruly , “ensure you take care of these three things:

Ask the right questions beforehand to understand the needs of the client, especially their flaws

Learn your product inside and out

Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse again

Danny Hayward Sales Manager, Unruly

How to nail your sales presentation delivery

Here are a few tried and true sales presentation techniques to make sure you close the deal.

Whether you’re presenting solo or as part of a team, it’s important to plan in advance. Follow these sales presentation tips for preparation.

Practice, practice, practice . You’ll need to get the timing right, especially if your presentation has a lot of moving parts. Go through it to make sure your timing works, so that you can nail the meeting itself.

Make sure everything works . You don’t want to go into a meeting with a faulty PowerPoint presentation or a broken sample – or find out there is no whiteboard when one is integral to your demonstration. Do your best to make sure everything goes to plan.

Decide on everyone’s roles . This one is just for those presenting as a team. Will different sales reps speak through each section? Will one rep talk while the others handle the sales deck and demo? Decide who will do and say what ahead of time.

Know your attendees. Make sure you know who from the prospect company will be in the meeting, their titles and the roles they each play in the buying process. Conducting light social media research can also clue you into attendees’ past experiences or alma maters (information that can fuel pre-presentation small talk and forge closer connections with your audience).

Practice confident body language

Presentations usually happen in person, which is why you need to practice strong body language. You want to look relaxed and confident (even if you’re shaking in your shoes).

Here are some ways you can improve your body language:

Eye contact . Make and maintain eye contact, even in virtual meetings. This shows people you’re interested in them and invested in what they have to say.

Stand up straight . Pull your shoulders back and straighten your spine; fixing your posture is an easy way to convey confidence. You’ll also feel better if you’re not hunched over.

Chin up. It’s hard when you’re in front of people, but don’t look at the floor or your shoes. Face straight ahead and make eye contact (or look at the back wall rather than the floor.)

Have a firm handshake. Some people judge others by their handshakes. Offer a firm handshake to make a good first impression.

Engage your audience

Presentations can span 30 to 60 minutes or more, so you need to be able to hold your prospects’ attention. There are a number of ways to keep everyone interested:

1. Understand your audience’s attention span

The beginning and the end of your presentation are the most memorable, so that’s where you want to use your strongest material.

Rather than leading with your product’s features, use the first few minutes of a presentation to briefly introduce yourself, and share the compelling story we mentioned earlier. If your demo itself is compelling, lead with that.

Then talk about product features and pricing. Your prospects might have already researched it or can look it up afterward, so it’s fine that it’s occupying real estate in the middle of the presentation.

Lastly, finish strong. Return to your story, sharing how your product solved an important problem. Close with confidence, and open the floor for questions.

2. Be funny

Humor can be tricky, so if you’re not comfortable making jokes, don’t force it. If, however, humor is part of your brand voice and you think it will be well-received by your audience, go for it. Humor can be a good way to connect with prospects, make your presentation memorable and relax everyone in the room.

3. Use a little showmanship

The best thing about a sales presentation is that it lets you show off your product. Unlike a pitch, a presentation lets you pull out the stops, make a splash and showcase your solution.

Use this to your advantage and be as memorable as you possibly can.

Sophie Cameron Business Development Representative, CAKE

What to do after the sales presentation to close the deal

The sales cycle isn’t over when the sales presentation ends. Here are some tips on how to wrap up loose ends and close the deal.

Take questions

Encourage questions to show prospects you care about their experience.

Sometimes prospects may want a question answered right in the middle of a presentation. Interactivity is a great sign of engagement. If that happens, stop the presentation and take their questions head-on to show you’re listening and validate their thoughts.

Other times they may sit silently waiting for you to give them all the information they need.

In either case, proactively ask for questions once you’ve ended your presentation. Encourage them to share their concerns. This is a consultative selling approach that works to build a relationship with your prospects.

By the end of your sales pitch, your prospect should be ready to come along with you and start your business relationship.

Outline the next steps of the process. The first could be offering a trial of your product, scheduling a follow-up meeting or sending over a proposal.

Whatever the steps, make sure they’re clearly defined. If you don’t hear from the prospect soon after the proposal, check back in with a follow-up email or call.

How to write a response-worthy follow-up email (with 15 templates)

Great sales presentation examples (and why they worked)

Here are some sales pitch examples you can use to inform your next sales presentation; these examples range from great sales decks to presentations and we’ll explain why they worked so well.

The successful demo

Stephen Conway of vegan chocolate brand Pure Heavenly opened his elevator pitch on the UK’s Dragons’ Den in 2019 by handing out samples of his chocolate. The product, paired with Stephen’s story about wanting to create an allergen-free treat that his young daughters could enjoy, led to three offers.

Why it worked: Conway knew the strength of his product and packaged it in a personal story, betting (correctly) that it would sell itself.

The data-driven presentation

Lunchbox is a restaurant technology company that specializes in online ordering, customer loyalty and guest engagement software. The sales deck the company used to raise its $50 million Series B in 2022 relied on bold visuals and graphs to illustrate its market opportunity, ARR history and competitive differentiators.

Why it worked: The deck tells two stories, one about the company itself and another about the way consumer dining habits have changed in the wake of COVID-19. Lunchbox used data to show how it met the industry’s new pain points for both itself and other companies.

Sales data: How to analyze sales data and a sample Excel spreadsheet

The presenters with overwhelming confidence

When Brian and Michael Speciale went on Shark Tank in 2017 to pitch their product, The Original Comfy, they had very little – no numbers or inventory, just a prototype of a big fleece blanket/hoodie and video of that hoodie being worn everywhere from the couch to the beach. What they did have was a good product and confidence in that product. Their presentation earned them an offer of $50,000 for 30% from Barbara Corcoran.

Why it worked: Corcoran says she bought in because the Speciale brothers had a good idea, the guts to present it and knew they had to strike while the iron was hot. While you probably should be more prepared for your own sales presentation, the Original Comfy story shows just how important confidence is in a sales presentation.

Begin your sales presentation by capturing your audience’s attention and establishing a solid foundation for the rest of your presentation. Here are some steps to consider:

Greet and introduce yourself

Establish rapport

State the purpose and agenda

Address the pain points

Present a compelling hook

Outline the benefits

Establish credibility

Set expectations

Remember to maintain a confident and enthusiastic demeanor throughout your presentation.

The ideal length of a sales presentation can vary depending on factors such as the complexity of the product or service, the audience’s attention span and the context in which the presentation is being delivered. However, keeping a sales presentation concise, focused and within the timeframe is generally recommended.

The conclusion of a sales presentation is a significant opportunity to leave a lasting impression and inspire action from your audience. Here are a few steps you should take to end your presentation effectively.

Include a call to action

Summarize key points

Showcase success stories

Open the floor to questions

Offer additional resources

Here’s an example of how to end your presentation:

“To quickly recap, we’ve covered these key points today: [Summarize the main features and benefits briefly].

“Now, let’s revisit our success stories. Our clients, like [Client A] and [Client B], achieved [mention their specific results]. These successes demonstrate how our product/service can deliver tangible benefits for your business.

“I’d be happy to address any questions or concerns you may have. Please feel free to ask about anything related to our offering, implementation process or pricing.

“Before we finish, I’d like to encourage you to take the next step. Schedule a demo, request a trial or start a conversation with our team. Don’t miss the opportunity to experience the advantages firsthand.

“Lastly, we have additional resources available, such as case studies and whitepapers, to provide you with more insights. Feel free to reach out to our team for any further assistance.

“Thank you all for your time and consideration today.”

Final thoughts

It can be tempting to play it safe with a sales presentation by keeping it to a sales deck and a speech – but a sales presentation should be a show-stopper.

The best sales presentation tells your customer’s story, validates with data, offers a demo and more. It’s a major undertaking that shows the strength of your product. Done well, it keeps your prospects engaged and will make them want to do business with you.

Show customers how your product can push their business forward (or better yet, how your product can make them the superhero) and you’ll have a winning sales presentation that sparks your customer’s interest and drives revenue.

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How To Write A Perfect Sales Pitch: Best Practices, Examples, And Templates

When I hear the phrase ‘sales pitch,’ I have ambivalent feelings about it. On the one hand, it’s just something inevitable, something every sales rep has to deal with. On the other hand, there’s…well…negative shade to it. Pitch? Really? I don’t like people pitching me any sort of thing.

Mulling over this confusion, I dare to infer: a good sales pitch can’t be pitchy.

Otherwise, it will make your prospects experience not the best feelings.

But what makes a sales pitch good? In this post, I’ll answer this question and share sales pitch examples and templates to make your pitch not pitchy but perfect .

What is a sales pitch?

Elements of a good sales pitch.

• How to make a sales pitch
• Sales pitch templates

A sales pitch is a concise sales presentation in which a salesperson makes a sales offering. They explain their business and non-intrusively show the value of their product/service. Salespeople commonly make their sales pitch at least once a week, so for sales teams, this is a regular part of the sales process .

You might deal with various sales pitch types depending on which channel you use for it:

• Cold calling. ‘Call the damn leads’ – the phrase you might have heard hundreds of times, which reflects how you can reach a sales prospect with your offering – by phone.
• Email outreach. Alternative to calling a prospect, you can use email to present your offering.
• Social selling. You can contact your prospects on various social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more.
• Elevator pitch. You typically use it at business events or when meeting someone in your industry for the first time.

Interestingly, you might come across the term ‘elevator pitch’ as just a synonym for ‘sales pitch.’ It emphasizes the very short time frame within which a sales pitch should be made – within the time of a single elevator ride.

I won’t tell you that your sales pitch must have a strict structure. To be honest, I’d prefer to deal with creative sales reps who afford a sort of freedom, as they sound more personal and emanate credibility.

Anyway, creativity is something that should follow knowledge. So, if you’re planning to get some understanding of how a good sales pitch differs from a bad one, I would say that a good sales pitch is commonly based on 6 essentials and advise that you keep them in your pitch.

When you contact a person for the first time, you can’t expect them to embrace you with both arms wide. Just put yourself in their shoes; what would you think? I bet you’d think, ‘What do you want from me?’

There must be something that will show them you are not a stranger – a good hook. As a salesperson, you should do thorough research and find information about the prospect that will let you catch their attention from the start.

You’ve read a prospect’s post? You’ve heard their company launched a new product? Or maybe you’ve just looked through their LinkedIn bio and think you have much in common? All this information can work well.

Here are some examples of hooks you can use:

“I see you’ve been promoted to the position of ___. Congratulations!”

“I’ve read your post about ____. I find your tips really useful.”

Alternatively, start your pitch with a direct explanation of why you’re contacting a person:

“The reason I’m calling/emailing is that ____.”

Even after impressing the prospect with your hook, you’re still a stranger to them. It’s time you told them a bit of information about your company. Just be careful here: you might be tempted to speak/write a lot. Resist it. Your intro must be short and straightforward, something like this:

“I am a sales manager at ____. Our company specializes in ____.”

3. Pain points

You’re making a sales pitch without pitching, remember? In your sales pitch, you’re not someone who is selling; you’re someone who is helping the prospect solve their problem. Your task is to identify your prospect’s pain points and highlight how your solution can help.

For example:

“I’ve read your company is using multiple services for ____, _____, and _____. It looks like you’re spending a lot of money on monthly subscriptions while your team has no single platform for cooperation.”

4. Benefits

I would say that’s the most crucial element of your pitch, your best moment to convince the prospect to buy your product/service.

Sadly, but very often, salespeople mix benefits with features. Don’t do this. In fact, your prospects don’t want to hear how excellent your solution is. They want to hear what they’ll get; they want a result.

Provide them with your value proposition.

Try to create a vision of success your prospect will experience after trying your solution. Will they become more productive? Will they spare money? Will they grow their revenue? You should know particular benefits your prospect will get and clearly state them, better with facts and figures.

For instance:

“With our tool, you’ll be able to manage all your workflow on one platform. This will help you enhance your productivity, sparing up to 5 hours daily, which your team can spend on most important tasks, and saving 30% of your budget.”

About 72% of customers say positive testimonials increase their trust in a business. That’s because people need proof, so give it to them.

A good way is to reference companies who are your current customers, especially those who are your prospect’s direct competitors. And don’t forget to support it all with facts and numbers.

“We have been able to help companies like _____ grow their productivity by 30% and increase revenue by 15%.”

6. Call to action

The closing element of your sales pitch should hint at further cooperation with the prospective customer. Here I would advise you to ask your prospect an engaging question and call them to action, for instance, get together for a sales interview . But don’t just appoint a meeting; concentrate again on the value it will bring to your potential client.

“What if we arrange a video call next week for me to show you how we have helped companies like yours specifically. Would it be worth your time to see how our solution could save effort and money?”

Now that you understand the basic elements of a sales pitch let’s walk through some working tactics that will help you make your pitch irresistible.

How to make a sales pitch: best practices and examples

Do your research.

Before making a pitch, the first thing to do is to study your prospect from different angles. You should be clear about who you’re pitching to , so don’t neglect to find the basic demographic and firmographic data, like a person’s name, position, and information about the company.

A good option is to rely on LinkedIn , from which you can collect lots of data, such as the company’s news, industry-related posts, and comments, and use it as a compelling hook for your sales presentation.

Use storytelling

Did you know that a great story can lead to the release of oxytocin, which creates a deeper connection between the storyteller and their audience? Not a surprise, storytelling is considered one of the most powerful sales techniques.

I highly recommend that you build your pitch around a narrative. Tell your prospect how other companies started using your product/service and what improvements they got. If you feel your prospect is inclined to object to your offering, you can even tell a brief story of how you have overcome problems by adopting a new technology after several objections.

Focus on the prospect

Even if you provide an example of your company in your sales pitch, make sure you don’t go too far telling your prospect about your best functionality for another long hour.

A good sales pitch is a story where the main hero is a prospect, not you. So concentrate on your prospect’s current challenges and the bright perspectives they’ll get when they buy your offering.

Balance between emotions and reason

In one of my previous posts about B2B sales psychology , I talked about the importance of appealing to emotions during a sales pitch. Here I would add that you should harmonize it with the appeal to the logical side.

You can appeal to emotions while talking about the prospect’s pain points, say, by asking them how they feel about their current problem. Or you can draw a positive picture of future improvements with your solution by asking them how they would feel if your product/service solved their problem.

Create the FOMO effect

FOMO (fear of missing out) is a perception that you’re lagging behind others in experiencing the advantages of your current life. In sales, you can use the FOMO effect as a psychological trick to stimulate your prospect’s motivation to buy.

Try telling them success stories of direct competitors who have been using your product/service for a while. I’ve mentioned it in the previous chapter while talking about proof. This way, your prospects might feel anxious about missing out on something important their rivals already have in their pocket.

Personalize your sales pitch

Make sure your sales pitch is relevant to your prospect. Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach and focus on specific needs and pain points of a company you’re going to sell to. And let me remind you again: do research before you start your pitch and learn about your prospects, so you can address them personally, win their positive attitude, and build trust.

Another way to build trust with your prospects is to position yourself as an industry expert. Why not add interesting facts to your sales pitch that your prospective customer might not know about?

For example, if your offering concerns a sales CRM , you can add some general information about the CRM market or statistics about how companies are adopting a new CRM. That will show you are well-versed in the subject and only add to the value of your offering.

Be prepared to handle sales objections

It hurts, but your sales pitch won’t always be accepted as something your prospect has been waiting for. Prospects do object, and yes, they do it quite often. Just be prepared to come up with counter-arguments to back you up.

Collecting a list of typical sales objections is important to the process of strategizing your sales pitch. When you know how to handle objections quickly, you’ll appear more credible and professional to the prospect.

It might be strange to imagine yourself talking aloud, but you need to practice your sales pitch beforehand. Make a plan of your presentation, including all the elements mentioned above, and exercise what you’ll be saying, in what order, figuring out possible questions and prospects’ reactions to your sales pitch.

The top 5 sales pitch templates for your business

Wow, it seems you’re now ready to conquer the hearts of your prospects. Just one last bonus – I’ve prepared 5 templates to support your sales pitch email efforts.

Just remember: templates are fine, but your pitch must be highly personalized, so use them as convenient backing for your creativity.

Sales pitch email template #1 – Sales introduction

Use this template in case your prospect hasn’t heard about you before. Your key goal here is to give them a reason to start communicating with you, so prepare a hook and demonstrate you’ve done your homework, researching a company you’re going to pitch to.

Sales pitch email template #2 – Prospect’s website visit

Never miss a chance to make a pitch to a prospect who has visited your website. You don’t need to look for a specific hook in this case, as you’ve got one already. This template will help show you are attentive to your website audience and ready to help immediately.

Sales pitch email template #3 – Responding to content

Most of your prospecting customers are publishing regular content, usually blog articles. This is a wonderful opportunity to use one of their posts as a hook to build links and make a sales pitch.

Sales pitch email template #4 – LinkedIn connection email template

LinkedIn is one of the best platforms for getting new customers, so once your prospect has accepted your connection, you can use it as a hook for making a non-intrusive sales pitch. You can do this through LinkedIn messages, InMails, or email. The latter will be a better solution to deal with LinkedIn limits and restrictions .

Sales pitch email template #5 – Objection handling

This template will help you to stay in the game even after your prospect objects. As you see, a bit of storytelling can save the situation. If you don’t have a similar story to share, you can always use one of your customer’s use cases .

Wrapping up

A sales pitch is an inevitable part of your job as a sales rep. And while there are dozens of prospects who have negative associations with it (yes, just like me), you already know that making a good sales pitch is possible without being pitchy.

I hope all the above tips, examples, and templates will help you come up with a sales pitch that will melt your prospect’s hearts the way none ever did. Meanwhile, Snov.io will take care of your sales process from start to finish.

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Crafting a Sales Pitch That Sells (7 Strategic Examples)

June 10, 2024

by Charlotte Powell

Why should you care about a sales pitch?

4 components of a great sales pitch, where should you do the sales pitch, how to create the perfect sales pitch (7 steps), sales pitch do's and don'ts.

You're about to meet the prospect you've been chasing for months. Your mind goes blank as nerves take over. But what if you could turn that panic into confidence?

Whether you're a seasoned salesperson or just starting out, a well-crafted sales pitch can be the difference between striking gold and getting lost in the noise.

What is a sales pitch?

A sales pitch is a concise presentation designed to introduce a product or service, highlight its benefits, and ultimately convince the customer to make a purchase.

But with so much competition, how can you craft a pitch that stands out and resonates with your audience? Sales enablement platforms can be your secret weapon! These tools aggregate customer data and buying intent, helping you tailor your pitch to address specific pain points and goals. This way, you sound truly connected with your audience and result-oriented. But there's a lot more to crafting a winning sales pitch that I'll cover in the article, so stick around till the end!

You might think, "Isn't a sales pitch just a fancy way of pressuring someone to buy something?" The answer is no.  

Effective sales pitches focus on the why behind your product or service.  They explain how you can solve customer problems and improve their lives. A  well-crafted sales pitch is a cornerstone of establishing yourself as a leader in your industry.

Here's why every business should invest time in crafting a compelling sales pitch:

• Cuts through the noise: Potential customer's faces are bombarded with messages. A clear and concise pitch helps your business stand out from the crowd and quickly grab their attention.
• Builds trust and credibility: A well-structured pitch that focuses on the customer's needs demonstrates your expertise and positions you as a trusted advisor, not just a salesperson.
• Boosts employee confidence: When your team has a strong sales pitch, they'll feel empowered to approach potential customers with clarity and conviction.

 There are 4 key components of crafting an impactful sales pitch that not only captivates your audience but also drives conversions:

• Highlight a clear pain point: A strong pitch starts with empathy. Begin by identifying a specific pain point your prospect is facing. This demonstrates your understanding of their challenges and establishes trust. Don't just assume you know their struggles; use sales enablement anecdotes to pinpoint a pressing issue with which they're likely to resonate.
• Offer unexpected value: People crave novelty. Go beyond simply addressing the pain point. Surprise your prospect by showcasing an unexpected benefit your product or service offers. This could be a unique feature, a hidden cost-saving advantage, or a way to differentiate themselves from competitors.
• Show social proof: Facts and figures add credibility. Back up your claims with social proof in the form of data, statistics, or customer testimonials. Showcase how your solution has helped similar businesses achieve success. Social proof validates your message and builds trust, making your offering more alluring.
• Include a strong CTA: Don't leave your prospect hanging. End your pitch with a clear and compelling call to action (CTA). This could be scheduling a demo, requesting a free trial, or setting up a follow-up meeting. Make the next step easy and enticing, guiding your prospect toward a buying decision.

There are a multitude of avenues where you can deliver your sales pitch. Each offers unique opportunities for success: 

• Cold email prospects and present your pitch in a concise and compelling manner. Craft personalized messages tailored to each recipient to increase engagement and relevance.
• Cold call potential customers to deliver your pitch verbally. Be prepared with a clear script and key talking points to effectively convey your message and address any objections.
• Attend industry events like webinars , conferences, trade shows, or workshops relevant to your target market. These events provide opportunities to engage with a captive audience already interested in your industry. Pitch competitions to make meaningful connections and capture leads .
• Use social networking platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to share your sales pitch with a broader audience. Engage in conversations, share valuable content, and showcase customer testimonials to establish credibility and attract potential prospects.
• Schedule 1x1 meetings with qualified leads to deliver your sales pitch in a personalized setting. Use these interactions to understand their needs, address concerns, and tailor your pitch accordingly. Provide demonstrations or product samples to showcase the value of your offering firsthand.

Adapting and utilizing various channels is essential for effectively reaching and engaging potential customers.

We’ve focused on content (make it customer-centric), delivery, tech, and timing to give you an overview of what you need to consider as you prepare for your sales pitch.

Ready? Let’s dive right in.

Step 1: Press the pain point

This Shark Tank pitch for an app used by kindergarten teachers to share information with parents taps into an emotional pain point: Parents don’t know what their kids do all day.

This pitch is so effective because it’s entirely customer-focused. It begins by emphasizing the problem—an essential focus for any good pitch—and goes on to briefly address all the benefits of the solution without worrying about the tech at all.

Remember, people buy for emotional reasons. So, it makes sense to focus on benefits rather than features. Those benefits might differ for different customers, so don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to creating your pitch. If it’s customer-centric (and should be), then you might need to change the focus of your pitch when talking to different types of customers.

Step 2: Know what you’re selling – it’s not a product

Have you heard the expression ‘sell the hole, not the drill’? It’s that whole features vs. benefits thing again, and, in this case, it’s based on the premise that people don’t buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy a drill because they need to make a hole.

The Brightwell pitch above is a great example of selling to the problem, and so is this clip of Mark Cuban talking about how he sold basketball tickets for a losing team.

Cuban understood that going to a basketball game isn’t about watching a team win or lose; it’s the whole experience. Somewhere to take your kids, make memories, soak up an atmosphere, and feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself. That’s how he pitched tickets, and that’s how he made sales.

When you write your sales pitch, consider what your product means to people and all the broader implications that impact might have. Don’t just say your product saves time; give examples of what that time-saving means. Don’t just say it saves money; consider what it could be spent on.

Step 3: Engage your audience

If you want to build enthusiasm for your offering, you must show enthusiasm. Your customers want to hear it in your voice, see it in your face, and read it in your body language. If you’re nervous, your customers will feel nervous – and nervous customers don’t buy. If you’re bored, your customers will be bored. If you don’t want to be there, neither will they.

Your presentation style is a key factor in the success of your sales pitch, so it’s crucial that you engage with your customers. Connect with them on an emotional level – whether that’s with warmth, humor, or empathy. You need that emotional hook to reel them in.

If you want to know what engaging looks like, look at this guy pitching Party On Demand at Startupfest. 

Sure, it’s not everybody’s style, but there’s no doubting his enthusiasm for his product—and it’s clearly infectious, judging by the audience's reaction.

Step 4: Use storytelling techniques

Storytelling is a fundamental aspect of sales pitches. We use it to paint a picture of what life could be like with our product, to dramatize the pain point customers are already experiencing, to build engagement, and to elicit emotional responses to seemingly emotionless objects.

It works because storytelling conventions are so engrained in the human psyche that we’re all programmed to respond to them – not just emotionally, but chemically. We look for characters to identify with, situations we recognize, and journeys we can relate to.

We know that all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So, we understand that we ought to be listening for that arc, which (hopefully) means we’re engaged with what you’re saying while we wait to hear the outcome.

David Phillips gave an excellent TED Talk about the magical science of storytelling and why it’s so effective. The whole thing is worth a watch, but skip to the six-minute mark for a great lesson in the power of storytelling – how it increases focus, memory, and creativity.

Step 5: Use slides wisely

It is tempting to put everything you want to say into a slide deck to prompt you as you pitch. Equally, with all the potential of modern technology, you might want to say it with video, but we advise against that.

Sales is all about the relationships formed between people. If you read off a screen or put it all in a video, really, what you’re saying is, "You don’t need me." And if they don’t need you, they won’t buy from you.

That’s not to say slide decks aren’t useful. Used wisely, they can emphasize and illustrate your point. Take a look at this example from Dragon’s Den. These guys are using their slide deck to illustrate their sales story. (Note: They also use storytelling techniques, push the pain point, know what they’re selling, and are reasonably engaging.)

In the first slide, they even use the image as a punch line to illustrate the pain point Brand Yourself solves – and it gets a smile out of the typically severe Dragons. The slides showing what the product offers are pretty clear and interesting, but the entrepreneurs don’t spend time researching what’s on screen. It’s not necessary.

The Dragons can read it for themselves if they want to, but their attention is – rightly – focused on the gentlemen speaking.

Tip: Ditch the static slides! Level up with the top presentation software in 2024

Step 6: Test your tech, then test it again

Ask anyone about their experiences with PowerPoint presentations, and they will undoubtedly talk about the frustration and awkwardness of PowerPoint failures.

Sometimes, slide decks just flat out don’t work, or computers time out; the mouse runs out of batteries, or the screen is inexplicably blurry and unreadable. These problems cut your presentation time in half, and suddenly, you have to skip over slides that seemed unmissable when you put them in the deck.

PowerPoint can be a nightmare, but there are a few things you can do to prevent some of the basic failures: Test your tech, practice your PowerPoint, and test and practice some more—on location when possible. We love tablets for delivering presentations because the intuitive swipe and tap cut out the mousey middleman and make for a much more fluid experience.

But what happens when things go wrong despite your best efforts? That is the main reason not to lean on your slide deck to tell your story for you. If it only enhances your presentation and doesn’t work, then it's no biggy. You can carry on without it.

Though your gut may want to wait and see if the error can be fixed, your customers are unlikely to stay with you while that happens.  It's better to continue with your presentation and ensure that your words are so engaging that you don’t need pictures. You can always email the presentation over to your customers if there is something in particular you need them to see.

People root for the underdog. So, if you can win them over in spite of technical failings, chances are that’s going to be the start of a beautiful relationship. The best thing to do is keep going. And don’t worry—it happens to the best of us.

Remember the iPhone X launch?

He styles it out. Many, many people still bought the iPhone X. Apple’s world did not end.

Step 7: Right message, right time, right place

Delivering a killer sales pitch involves being the person with the right message at the right time in the right place.

You might pitch in a meeting scheduled months in advance or off the cuff at an industry event. Regardless, your success will usually come down to knowing your product and your customers—and getting to them at the right time.

So, how do you do that? A lot of research.

Keep abreast of where your prospects are at – both in terms of business and physically (which events they are going to). Watch for signs they may be interested in your offering and make the most of them. Connect with them on social media to add value, not pitching over LinkedIn Messenger. Make sure there’s plenty of positive, educational content, putting your name under their noses. And when your time comes, seize the day.

It’s difficult to find a real video of that online. So, our final video is a clip from "The Pursuit of Happyness," in which Will Smith’s character is cold-calling. He takes a risk that pays off, putting him in the right place at the right time.

Crafting a winning sales pitch requires a delicate balance. Here's a breakdown of what to do and what to avoid to ensure your message resonates and drives results:

• Speak their language: Infuse your pitch with data-driven insights relevant to your prospect's industry or challenges.
• Master the art of storytelling: Weave a compelling narrative that showcases your product's capabilities through relatable scenarios. Hone your brand storytelling skills to make your pitch engaging and memorable.
• Keep it concise: Respect your prospect's time. A well-structured pitch should be clear and concise, delivered within a limited timeframe.
• Focus on yourself: The spotlight belongs to the prospect. Avoid "I" statements and steer the conversation towards their needs and goals.
• Drag on: Time is of the essence. Avoid lengthy pitches that drag on. During initial interactions, avoid getting bogged down in intricate product features. Keep the focus on the core benefits your solution offers.
• Bring up pricing prematurely: Price discussions are best left for later stages of the sales cycle. Focus on building value and establishing trust first.
• Be a one-size-fits-all salesperson: Tailor your pitch to each prospect's unique situation and challenges. Generic pitches fall flat; cater your message for maximum impact.

It’s time to crush your sales presentation!

You need customer-centric content that tackles problems not products; an engaging delivery that draws your audience in; storytelling techniques that keep them on the hook; and a slide deck that supports your pitch – without taking over.

Then practice, practice, practice until you’re confident you can do it at any time and anywhere – you never know when the opportunity might arise.

Discover how G2 can elevate your sales engagement and drive revenue growth.

This article was originally published in 2019. It has been updated with new information.

Discover how a sales enablement platform can streamline your sales and boost your conversion rate.

Charlotte Powell is the head of creative at iPresent Ltd, which works to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. iPresent helps companies present more effective, controlled content from a tablet or browser – creating a more productive and successful sales team. It’s Charlotte's job to make sure the brilliant tech behind iPresent's product looks impressive in the most user-friendly way possible, while working with her team in the U.K. and U.S. to get the message out there that iPresent can really help to transform businesses through a variety of marketing avenues

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15 Best Sales Pitch Examples [+ Tips and Templates]

Melissa Williams

What Is a Sales Pitch?

​​types of sales pitches, 15 sales pitch examples, sales pitch tips, sales pitch template.

When it comes to sales pitch examples and persuading anyone about anything, a dichotomy holds true:

You want (or believe) one thing; they want or believe another thing.

The easiest way to get from Point A to B is to connect the dots.

You find your audience’s point of view (POV) and connect to their values or needs.

Below are 15 sales pitch examples that show you tactical strategies and sales techniques to do it the right way.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

A sales pitch is a concise, targeted sales presentation that succinctly explains the following aspects of an offer: 

• The product’s/service’s features and benefits
• Unique value proposition/unique selling proposition (USP)
• Data to back up your claims

Really great sales pitches also sometimes manage to make subtle references to more nuanced company information, like a mission statement, brand values, and more. 

Sales pitches vary in length depending on their format, the specifics of your offer, and the needs of your market. 

That being said, they’re definitely meant to be short — usually only a couple of minutes or less. That’s why a sales pitch is also sometimes referred to as an “ elevator pitch .” The idea is that you should be able to deliver the entire spiel in the time it takes to share an elevator ride with someone. 

Because time isn’t usually on a sales rep’s side when they’re pitching, they need to make sure the content and delivery are extremely compelling. 

To that end, it’s also important that the purpose of a pitch isn’t to sell the product immediately after the pitch. Instead, aim for baby steps; a more appropriate goal of a sales pitch would be to have to prospect book another meeting, sign up for a webinar, or commit to a demo. 

Sales reps have a lot of flexibility when it comes to pitching. There are several formats and delivery options available to suit the needs of any product, rep, or target market. 

Phone Sales Pitch

Though cold calling (and, these days, phone calling in general) gets a bad reputation, it can actually be a surprisingly effective approach for a sales pitch. 

One of the advantages of a phone pitch is that it happens live, in real-time, so sales reps can gauge the prospects’ response and adjust their tactics accordingly. 

Phone sales pitches also make it easy for sales reps to show how much they’ve done their research as they deliver a highly personalized, value-driven offer. 

Pitching over the phone can also provide a natural segue into initiating an email conversation. 

Voicemail Sales Pitch

If you’re going to practice phone sales pitching, you’ll also want to master your voicemail sales pitch. 

With about 80% of all calls going to voicemail , chances are high that phone-based reps will need to rehearse exactly what they’re going to say when they hear that beep. 

And with so little time in the day (and the depressing statistic that only 5% of voicemails ever get returned), your voicemail sales pitch needs to be intriguing enough that it compels the prospect to give you the time of day, listen to the message, and call you back. 

Email Sales Pitch

The email sales pitch is a great tactic for sales teams that need to pitch to a large number of prospects. Reps who use this format get the benefit of being able to pitch to prospects anywhere, at any time. 

Still, for all of its conveniences, email sales pitching comes with its own set of challenges. 

Standing out in a prospect’s inbox, for example, is no easy feat. People receive over 100 business emails per day , so reps need to know how to cut to the chase immediately (bullet points are great for this). Even the subject line can become make-or-break for some messages. 

The best way to use an email sales pitch is to focus on one or two primary points, and stick to them throughout. Remember, your main goal is to initiate further conversation; you can pick up where your email left off the next time you speak. 

Social Media Pitch

Instead, look for ways to use social media that will hold up as timeless. 

Social media pitching is great for increasing brand awareness and establishing credibility. It allows sales reps and prospects to engage in a casual, easy way that helps build rapport and trust. 

Presentation Sales Pitch

The terms “sales pitch” and “sales presentation” are sometimes conflated. And for casual purposes, that’s mostly fine. 

But in technical terms, a presentation sales pitch is one that includes a sales deck. 

The sales deck is the presentation component — a visual supplement (including images, copy, graphics, charts, etc.) that improves your pitch. Tools like PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Keynote can help sales reps of any experience level create sales decks for presentations. 

Over 90% of the information that’s transmitted to the brain is visual, so having the ability to present with visual aids is a huge advantage. 

For a really polished presentation, email and/or print a PDF copy of the sales deck for the prospect, so they can review it on their own time and share it with other relevant decision-makers . 

Website Sales Pitch

Some sales teams use their company website to help them make their pitch. 

A website sales pitch includes any strategic messaging and/or content placed on the page that’s designed to capture prospects’ attention and encourage them to take the next action (e.g., fill out a form, call a sales rep, etc.). 

One of the biggest advantages of using the website to assist the sales pitch is that this format can be very effective at showcasing your brand values without coming across as too sales-y.

Follow-Up Sales Pitch

Elevator Pitch

“ Elevator pitch ” is the long-standing nickname for a sales pitch, and is named for the way salespeople need to pitch — quickly! Reps can get into the right mindset for an elevator pitch by imagining that they need to get their points across by the time the listener arrives to their floor. 

This is one of the shortest types of sales pitches, usually clocking in at 60 seconds or less. Be quick, be honest, and be friendly. The elevator pitch exists to make connections and is an invitation to learn more — don’t make it more complicated than that.

Sales Pitch Example #1: The Elevator Pitch

In today’s day and age where everyone is on the go, the elevator pitch is a necessity. People simply don’t have the bandwidth for a full-length presentation — especially when they’re only just exploring their options. 

>>Example: Check out this example in which a G2 rep pitches his product with authenticity and enthusiasm in under 20 seconds. 

Social proof (i.e. data from case studies, quotes from testimonials, etc.) is one of the most powerful things you can include in a sales pitch. 

Just make sure you find a balance between sharing what other people think versus sharing what you can do specifically for that prospect’s unique challenges. 

Sales Pitch Example #2: The Product Demonstration

Sometimes, there’s really nothing like the real deal to get the prospect hooked. A live product demonstration can be incredibly compelling. 

>>Example: Check out the way the founder of Scrub Daddy scrubbed his way into three different Sharks’ hearts (who ended up arguing for the right to work with him!) and earned his company a lucrative investment. 

Watching this video, there’s no denying that the product works. The interested Sharks have absolutely no skepticism about the product or its claims; in fact, the best-fit Shark is actually excited to give him the money — all because his product demo spoke for itself.

Sales Pitch Example #3: The Pain Point Pitch

Here’s another Shark Tank example, and the entrepreneur in this pitch knows exactly how to dig into his market’s pain points: by talking about their children.

It’s clear by their body language here that every Shark — even those who are too old, at this point, to have kids in daycare — knows exactly the struggle that Mr. Brightwheel describes in his introduction.

The universal frustration faced by teachers and parents alike is so poignant that all he needs to do is describe it for a minute or two, and it brings even empty-nest parents right back to those chaotic early years.

Sales Pitch Example #4: The Two-Sentence Pitch

The Two-Sentence Pitch (also sometimes called the 12-second pitch) has a very specific framework.

First sentence: Complete (but brief!) summary of what your company does. 

Second sentence: What sets your company apart from competitors.

That’s it! This structure is helpful for beginning conversations with investors. It’s also sometimes used as the introduction for a slightly longer elevator pitch. 

>> Example: Here’s the two-sentence pitch in action.

Yesware is a sales engagement platform that helps sales reps increase productivity, improve engagement with prospects, and guide team-wide data-driven decisions. We integrate with Gmail, Outlook, and Salesforce in under 60 seconds, giving reps access to data directly in their inbox. 

This pitch is short enough that the specific language and other components can easily be A/B tested to find the perfect combination of words, gestures, pauses, etc. 

Sales Pitch Example #5: Don’t You Agree?

This presentation pitch example is a bait-and-switch approach that leaves your audience agreeing with you.

Here’s how it works :

• Start with an undeniable truth.
• Make a bold claim that contrasts it. One that should stir up some furrowed brows.
• Why they should agree + Solution.

>> Example:  Here is a set of slides by Drift that does this well. The breakdown of the pitch:

Truth : Tech has taken over our lives.

Bold claim : Forms, emails, and calls are the enemy. (Keep in mind that this is being pitched to marketers and salespeople, who rely on these channels for leads and customer communication.)

Why + Solution : Tech makes us treat humans like faceless leads. We should be focusing on creating real conversation and solving needs. Meet Drift.

The beauty of this approach is it makes us think differently. Deep down, we all want to push our teams ahead. Doing so requires innovation and change. Your pitch introduces a new line of thinking that helps your audience become a change agent for their team.

Want more? Here are 7 of the best sales presentation slides   from companies like Facebook, Uber, and LinkedIn.

Sales Pitch Example #6: Start With a Story, Segue Into Your Pitch

Storytelling captivates us as an adult just as much as it did when we were a child.

Our brains literally react to them. Stories trigger the release of a trust hormone called Oxytocin. When storytelling in a sales pitch , this chemical reaction promotes connection and empathy.

>> Example: See this story by Amy Cuddy . (The pitch here is that we really can fake it until we make it; our body language informs our perception of ourselves and others’ perceptions of us, thereby shaping our outcomes.)

Here are the details to include in your story (with the speaker’s filled out as an example):

What : A car accident threw her from the car, dropped her IQ, and took her out of college.

When : Age nineteen

Why it matters : Amy overcame the odds by faking it until she made it. She realized that adjusting her body language shaped her mind, her behaviors, and her outcomes.

Pro Tip : Keep your story short. You should hit on all of the details above in less than 2 minutes. Here’s an example of what not to do: a seventeen-minute story by LEGO®.

Sales Pitch Example #7: Start With a Stat

Sharing data during a sales pitch is a surefire way to demonstrate your credibility. It shows that you’ve done your research and that you understand how their problem affects them in a very tangible way.

How it works: Start your pitch with a statistic that highlights the problem the prospect faces. 

>>Example: Let’s imagine your sales team sells onboarding software for new hires. Your product is designed to cut down on wasted time training new employees and reduce employee turnover. 

Did you know that disengaged or poorly-trained employees actually cost companies money? Employees with low engagement cost their organizations approximately 18% of their salary. And that’s not to mention the fact that it costs anywhere from $7,500 to $28,000 (or more) to hire and onboard a new employee.

This is an effective intro, or “hook,” because it immediately gets the prospect thinking about their own budget and bottom line, and how to avoid the consequences mentioned in the statistics.

Sales Pitch Example #8: The Demo Principle

What do late-night infomercials, Costco samples, and magicians have in common?

They show you what they’re pitching firsthand.

The theory here is that the cost of time and resources it takes to give a demo is worth it, because the net profit from sales outweighs the net profit of sales without a demo.

How to do it : List out a table with two columns: bells and whistles go on the left; the end benefits go on the right. Cross out the bells and whistles; demo and sell the end benefits.

>> Example : Watch this carrot slicer show passersby about an easy peeling experience. Notice how little he talks about features of the peeler, because you can see them for yourself.

Sales Pitch Example #9: Give Perspective Based on Your Audience

When you’re pitching, you know the thing you’re trying to sell like the back of your hand.

But you need to know your audience like that, too.

It’s the key that helps bring their point of view to yours. And it’s one of the most easily overlooked secrets behind a successful sales pitch.

Most pitches make the classic mistake of jumping right into selling.

How to do it right on your own : Ask your customers to pick their brain. Why did they choose you? What benefits were they excited to see? Why do they keep coming back? Lead with that.

>> Example: Watch Mark Cuban explain what he did when he was faced with selling Mavs tickets when they were the worst team in the league. (Start the video at 1:01.) He reframes the game experience as a way for parents to create lasting memories with their children — memories like the ones they still have with their own parents.

Sales Pitch Example #10: Use Emotional Appeal

Another thing that works in Mark Cuban’s pitch is that he uses nostalgia.

Triggering someone’s emotion drives them to act.

Think about it: It’s why panhandling works : it sparks sympathy, which compels us to give.

How to do it on your own : Identify your audience’s business and/or personal values. Show how your pitch relates to their own values. ( Yesware , for instance, relates to its users by being built to save them time and increase their productivity every day.)

>>Example: See this Shark Tank pitch , where a company founder gets two sharks tearing up by getting them to commiserate with the risks of starting a new company.

Using content in your pitch that strikes an emotional chord is one of 7 proven sales techniques to close a deal and get to “yes.”

Sales Pitch Example #11: Educate and Inspire

The way we grow in life, love, and our careers is by learning.

On the flip side of that, one way to help others to grow is to educate. And not in a way where you push your opinions. You need to lay the groundwork with facts they don’t know.

How to do it yourself : Use specificity. It’s a persuasive technique to make your points more believable.

>>Example: Here is a video pitch from CharityWater .

It lays out these important facts:

• Some people have to walk 4 hours a day to get access to drinking water, and even then it is contaminated with dysentery and cholera.
• Drinking dirty water each year kills more people than intense violence like war.
• The water crisis is solvable. There is enough water in the world.

Sales Pitch Example #12: Use the Pique Technique

What was the first thing you did when you woke up this morning?

It’s the opening line of the video example above, and it captures viewers.

The thing is, when you’re selling to someone who doesn’t want to be sold to, jumping into a standard pitch is a fast turnoff.

The Pique Technique is where you make an odd request or ask a question that leaves your audience wanting to know more. They wonder why you’re asking, and that keeps them focused.

How to do it yourself : Make a small request of your audience, or ask them a question that’s easy to answer but leaves them wondering why you’re asking in the first place.

>> Example :

Sales Pitch Example #13: Paint Them a Picture

You think what you’re pitching is great, right? Well, the best way to show your audience this is to give them your POV.

How to do this : Think of the end effect of whatever you’re pitching. What does it feel like? Use a metaphor to explain it to your audience. You’ll need three or more points of similarity between the thing you’re pitching and the thing you’re comparing it to.

Because this can be tricky, here are two examples:

>>Example 1: Joe MacMillan compares the first web browser to driving through the Holland Tunnel:

Points of similarity:

• Possibility to be able to go anywhere
• Excitement of what is to come
• The anticipation of everything being laid out before you

>>Example 2: Don Draper pitches a slide projector wheel by describing it as a time machine:

• Goes backward and forwards
• Takes us to a place where we ache to go again
• Lets us travel to a place where you know you’re loved

As Don Draper says, this technique helps your audience to create a sentimental bond with whatever it is you’re pitching.

Sales Pitch Example #14: Use Flattery

We all have some level of self-doubt.

Which is why flattery is so effective.

It replaces our self-doubt with self-esteem. This subconscious effect holds true even when the offeror has an ulterior motive and the person you’re complimenting sees your ulterior motive .

>> Example:

Check out 5 more email examples of personal selling  in action.

Sales Pitch Example #15: Show Them That Their Time > Your Time

This one makes you stand out because 98% of sales pitches make a valiant assumption.

One that ruins their shot — despite the effort put into writing and setting up the nurture.

They assume is that their time is more valuable than their prospects.

The mindset is “I put in 1 minute of research, so I’m warranted to ask for 15-30 of yours.”

Because “I think this is a really good fit.”

Who cares? The trash can.

Instead, show them you spent more time researching than you’re asking for.

>> Example: See the example below. First, Asher runs an audit to pitch. Then, he reaches out through LinkedIn Messaging and email to send me the audit directly.

Within the same hour, I then received this with the audit attached:

Keep the following tips in mind as you practice and perfect your sales pitch. 

Research…a Lot

As fast-moving as most sales pitches are, they require a tremendous amount of research ahead of time. 

For a sales pitch to be effective, the rep who’s delivering it needs to be on top of everything from product knowledge to customer knowledge, to market trends and predictions. 

Solid sales pitch research means understanding: 

• The prospect’s pain points , needs, challenges, and preferences
• The appropriate channel for distributing the pitch 
• The decision-makers at the prospect’s company, and how to reach them
• Which questions and/or objections may be presented during the pitch

The more thorough your research, the more personalized your pitch will be. 

Make a Connection

Although it’s hard to measure, a lot of your success with sales pitching will come down to how well you make your first impression. 

Avoid the temptation to launch directly into your pitch content, no matter how limited your time. 

Instead, be the leader in building rapport. Make an effort to make a connection, and (of course) always remember to pitch with honesty and integrity. 

Start With a Strong Opening

You only have a few minutes to pitch, so the first few seconds are key. The opening of your pitch (sometimes called “the hook”) is one of the most important parts to master. 

To add curiosity and engagement to this section, consider starting by asking a question or sharing a relevant statistic. 

Work on Your Messaging

Regardless of the format of your pitch, always ensure that your brand messaging and value proposition are communicated clearly. 

Numbers are precise and definitive — sharing statistics and data during a sales pitch can give prospects something tangible to reference as they contemplate more about your offer. 

Nail Your Next Steps

Remember, the point of a sales pitch is to get the prospect to agree to the next step in the process. 

To that end, sales reps need to make sure that they know exactly what they plan to ask for after their pitch. 

Whether you want a meeting, a demo, or simply an email address, make sure that you have your specific ask ready (along with any materials you need to make it easy for them to say yes). 

Although every sales pitch is different, there are a few components that are common to just about everyone. 

Use the following list to help you create a sales pitch template for your team. 

• Introduction: Make friendly introductions and build rapport. Pay attention to the prospect’s body language, and adjust your approach accordingly. 
• Problem/Pain Points: Many sales reps find it effective to start their pitch with a question, or with a surprise-factor statement relating to the prospect’s pain point. The idea is to get them feeling a bit unsettled at the beginning so that by the time you finish your pitch, they are relieved to hear about your solution. This is where you get to the heart of the “why” for the prospect. 
• Value Statement/Value Proposition: As clearly and concisely as you can, explain your company’s value proposition and unique differentiators. The way you describe your USP should be action-driven and results-oriented. Avoid overly technical jargon or complex explanations. 
• Proof Points/Customer Stories: Social proof is powerful enough that it should always be included in a sales pitch, no matter how limited your talk time is. Snippets from case studies, testimonials, and online reviews are all great resources that prove other customers trust you; internal data and success stories can also be very compelling. 
• Closing Question/CTA: At the end of your pitch, it’s time to talk next steps. Some reps choose to end their pitch the same way it began: with an open-ended question . This can put the ball in the prospect’s court and help guide them into the next stage. If they don’t get there on their own, though, it’s up to you to be firm and make a direct call-to-action (i.e., Can we set up a demo for Thursday? How’s 2:00pm?). 

Remember, it’s important to always connect the dots and put your prospect first.

These sales pitch examples use tactical strategies that are easily replicable but must be catered to your specific prospects.

This guide was updated on November 22, 2023.

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How to Deliver an Effective Sales Pitch, with Examples

March 5, 2021 - Julian Mayhew

Many people find delivering a sales pitch the most daunting part of becoming an entrepreneur but to generate business you need to effectively sell your products or services.

Delivering a great sales pitch can be the difference between securing a contract and failing to do so, or persuading a business to fund you rather than going it alone.

You’ll have to learn your client’s needs, learn what their problems are, and find a solution that fulfils all of their requirements. Only then can you present the pitch to close the deal. In this article, we discuss how to deliver an effective sales pitch.

Article contents

• Preparing for the pitch

Pitch introduction

During the pitch, ending the pitch.

• How to practice

Sales pitch preparation

Pitch to the right person.

Ensure that you’re pitching to the people that approve purchases; those that make the decisions about buying products or using services. Find out who the decision-makers are in the company and request to pitch to them because it’s a waste of everybody’s time if you’re speaking to the wrong people.

Research the company

The fundamentals of forming an effective sales pitch is understanding your prospect, their company and their industry. Without this you cannot tailor messages to target unique concerns. You need to research your prospect and find out:

• Who are they?
• How long have they worked in this industry?
• What background do they have?
• What does this company do?
• What problems do they have?
• Who are their competitors?

Also research the prospect’s industry to find common problems and think about how your product or service can help. Consider asking contacts, that work in this industry, about the problems as this allows you to hear your target audience describe their industry’s problems in their own words which is incredibly valuable.

Remember that you’re trying to find out what this client’s specific business needs are and how this links with what you’re selling, so ask yourself what will they gain by working with you?

Tailor the pitch to the client

Clients will immediately see through a pitch that has been reworked from an old one. To grab their attention you need to show them that you care about their business and have done the research to tailor your pitch to them. There are four simple ways to do this:

1. Find out what you can online – as described above

Also look up their profiles on LinkedIn and study the company’s website and social media sites.

2. Ask them questions before the pitch

Before you begin writing a pitch you should find out what the  client weaknesses  and needs are. No client will begrudge you doing your homework before the pitch and it will add a huge amount of value to it.

3. Use the client’s own words

Every company has their own jargon and set of ‘sayings’ or ‘mottos’. Integrating these into your pitch will resonate with the client and show that you have tailored the pitch to them.

4. Show empathy

Relating to the problems of the client and showing empathy with them will clearly put you on ‘their side’. This will help you to position yourself as a solution and will increase your chance of pitching successfully.

Anticipate objections

A common point wherein sales pitches fall down is when the solution is challenged. The client may see a problem or want to know more about an aspect of the proposal and you need to be ready to answer these questions quickly and effectively. Failing to do so will make you seem underprepared and unreliable.

Whilst you do want to focus on the highlights of the pitch, you also need to pick it apart and challenge it so that you can identify the weaknesses. Identify at least ten of the most likely reasons why someone might say they don’t need or want your product/service and prepare clear and succinct answers to these.

The  most common sales objections  are: Budget, Authority, Need and Time (BANT).

Rehearse these answers so you don’t have to think of how to articulate them during the pitch. Instead you can focus on answering in a reassuring way whilst maintaining eye contact and using body language to communicate trust and honesty. You’ll be able to sharpen your responses even more based on the feedback received at pitches.

Give the presentation structure

An effective pitch has a structure that makes it easy to follow. A common structure follows this format:

• What the client’s problem is
• The solution
• Agreeing to the next steps with the client

Whatever structure you decide on ensure that it’s simple as you’re less likely to lose the client this way.

Dealing with nerves

Remember that you haven’t been invited to pitch for the purpose of being ridiculed – the clients wants to hear how you can help their company. Plan for  managing your nerves  by:

• Avoiding consuming too much caffeine beforehand as this is a stimulant and can leave you feeling more nervous and shaky.
• Preparing music or a podcast that you can listen to on the way to the pitch.
• Find a  mindfulness exercise  you’d feel comfortable doing as you travel to the venue.
• Master controlled breathing beforehand so you can engage in this right before beginning the pitch.
• If you have time, engage in exercise beforehand. Exercising releases endorphins which reduce stress levels and make you feel better.
• Recognise that it’s unlikely that the clients will know that you’re feeling nervous – you do not look as anxious as you feel. If you’re finding it difficult to hide your nerves you can use this energy to emphasise your emotions, such as, the excitement you feel at one of the product’s features. The emotion you display will hide your nerves.

Learn more about using  AI to practice your sales pitches .

Open the pitch with energy and a strong posture

First impressions  have a huge impact on your sales pitch so shuffling in and looking nervously around as you set up will ensure you lose the client’s attention. Instead, practice maintaining eye contact with each audience member for a few seconds and keep your shoulders open so that you seem friendly and approachable.

Open with enthusiasm and ensure that you speak clearly from the outset – if you’re nervous you may automatically speed up your pitch so if you notice you’re doing this pause, take a few breaths and then continue at a slower rate.

Use your posture to show that you feel confident and comfortable. Stand tall and straight without slouching, keep your feet shoulder-width apart and evenly distribute your weight on both feet. This shows you feel confident in your product/services, it also discourages nervous movements and opens up your diaphragm to help you speak loudly and clearly.

Keep it short

Don’t start the pitch with a long monologue about yourself and the company’s history. This information can be found online and it’s likely that the client has already viewed it. You can provide a brief summary but move on quickly as you have limited time to get to the content the client actually care about.

Use an impressive cover slide

People engage much more with information displayed visually as opposed to just text. It’s therefore vital that you show either clear images, diagrams and other visual material, keeping text to a minimum. A vibrant and  appealing cover slide  will capture their attention right away.

Practice Sales Pitching

Improve your sales pitching skills by practicing in interactive exercises with automated feedback on performance. Learn More

Offer a solution to their needs

A  study has shown that  “only 13% of executive buyers believe that a salesperson can clearly show they understand their business issues and articulate a way to solve them.”

The key element in every sales pitch is offering a solution to the client’s needs – this is where you should focus most of your attention. You need to outline the problems and present the solution as a saleable and actionable product.

You might think that your product is great so you want to talk about all of its features but your client isn’t interested in your product – they’re only interested in what it will do for them. How can you make their life easier, how can you help run their business more effectively and help them be more successful? Translate the features into your client’s benefits.

Focus on confidence when presenting

It’s easy to practice the content of your pitch but you need to work on how you deliver the message. Don’t be doubtful in a pitch, for example, avoid saying “I’m hoping that… I’m aiming for…” Absolutes are better, such as, “It will” – you need to reflect certainty as this shows that you believe in the product so everyone else should as well.

Your body language and voice need to project enthusiasm and confidence. Imagine that somebody who doesn’t understand your language is watching your pitch – they should still get the impression that you have confidence in what you’re saying, know what you’re talking about and enjoy talking about it.

Tips for confident body language:

• Use the power pose (there is some  debate over how effective this is )
• Maintain eye contact with the buyers
• Use gestures to emphasise points
• Match facial expressions with what you’re saying
• Reduce nervous habits
• Slowly and steadily breathe
• Use vocal variety appropriately

For more details read our  8 Elements of Confident Body Language

Example of delivering a confident pitch

MIT’s 100K finale presentation:

MIT’s 100K finale presentation in 2015. The winner was Raptor Maps, a drone-based approach to monitoring crop health and yields. Watch team members Nikhil Vadhavkar and Forrest Meyen deliver the winning sales pitch!

Notice the following:

• How they open the presentation
• Confidence when presenting
• Deal with questions at the end
• Tell a story
• Use positive body language

Use simple language

Your aim is to be clear and easy to understand. Don’t use jargon unless it’s standard in their industry. Remove unnecessary buzzwords, such as “synergy”.

Be genuine and listen

Clients should not feel bullied or forced into a choice and being pushy will guarantee a bad relationship. Go into your pitch focusing on how you can help your prospect because you’re already approaching the pitch in a way of putting their needs first.

The most effective sales pitches facilitate a two-way exchange between the seller and client – it’s more of a conversation. This dialogue helps build better relationships. So try to deliver the pitch in a way that prompts them to share information with you. The following tips can help with this:

• Allow the client to interrupt
• Ensure that you don’t have an exact script because this will come across as insincere – having talking points is fine but a script is not because each interaction will differ and it needs to be tailored to the client
• Ask questions
• Present information in which they can agree or disagree with
• If you’re not comfortable trying to involve the client throughout your pitch, incorporate Q&A afterwards

When your client speaks really listen to them and don’t just wait for them to stop speaking so you can move on to your next talking point. No amount of preparation can replace thoughtful listening. Only then can you suitably address any apprehensions and decide whether your goods are the right match for them.

Also respond with thoughtful follow-up questions as this is crucial to understanding their needs and closing the deal. If you’re listening and asking the right questions you can adjust your message to attract the buyer.

Tell a success story

Clients  love to hear a story  about how you have helped another client and the more detailed you can be with this the better. Don’t give them an overly detailed account of how you helped, but be sure to provide some concrete numbers. Telling them that a similar company invested X and got Y in return will show them that what you are saying really works and has a proven track record.

Providing actual numbers to highlight improvement sounds significantly more impressive, such as this client saw their userbase grow by 3x, or this client increased their revenue by 10% due to our implementation.

Distinguish your product / services from competitors

You should describe how your product or service is different from competitors. It can be useful to ask the client about their experiences with similar products because this has the benefit of leading into why your product/service is unique and it also helps initiate a conversation.

Show value for money

Every client wants to see the value they will get form their investment. Make it clear how what you are offering will benefit the company. Diagrams, headers and testimonials will help you here. Give them impressive figures that they can jot down, remember and come back to when considering the pitch.

Use visual aids carefully

If your product can be demonstrated then show this in your pitch.

Slides can be useful to structure the presentation and show certain aspects of a product’s benefits. But they can also be a distraction as you or your audience may start reading which can reduce the authenticity of your pitch. Also, static visuals can’t match your voice’s enthusiasm. Top salespeople deliver pitches without slides as this leads into conversation faster.

If you feel that you need slides then display a title that conveys the key points of each slide, include a visual element and include no more than three pieces of information on each slide.

Read our article on  using visual aids during a pitch .

Limit your number of solutions

It can be tempting to offer clients a large range of solutions at varying price points to ensure a sale, but this can actually be detrimental to the pitch. Keeping the list of options  down to a minimum  shows that they are well thought through and makes them stand out as the key solutions. If you have a wide range of solutions this may confuse the client.

Use the words of happy customers

Supporting your claims with the words of other clients can go a  long way . Statistics show that 5 reviews is the magic number for increasing online sales and the same principle applies in a sales pitch. Telling the client about a happy customer is one thing, but showing them how happy a customer is in their own words is another thing entirely.

Integrate your most complimentary testimonials into the pitch and you’ll be more likely to convert. Clients will believe the words of others and trust you more when they see how others have praised you in the industry.

Don’t pressure sell

One key thing to avoid in your pitch is the pressure sell. Using tactics like offering a discount if they sign up now will only put prospective clients off and drive your pitch into the ground. It is important that the client sees the purchase as their own decision based on well thought out business principles.

The best you can do is to lay the arguments for a purchase in front of them clearly and allow them to decide that this is the right step to take. As long as your call to action is strong enough then they will make the right decision in the time frame you have outlined for them.

Read more about this in our article:  Powerful Sales Techniques and Tips

Ask if clarification is needed

Sometimes a sales pitch fails because the client was not clear on some key features of your goods. Avoid this by providing them with a chance to ask questions and ask if they need more information on something.

This can also help: prompt a conversation between you and the client which can build better relationships, make you seem more genuine and it gets you to repeat and emphasise the value of what you’re selling.

End with a clear call to action

The final stage in any pitch is to end on a clear call to action. Tell the client what needs to happen in order for them to realise the results that you have discussed. Set some clear timelines of when they can see results if they meet your call to action. If you can tell a client that they can achieve a goal by a certain date then they will recognise that delaying is only to their detriment.

Don’t wait for your prospect to make the call to action – this is your responsibility and not doing this could lead to the relationship or meeting ending before you have met your reason for coming.

Remember to close and agree to next steps

As it’s a dialogue you might forget to close, in fact a study found that 85% of the meetings between sellers and clients end without the seller ever asking for the sale. But closing is crucial.

You’ve done most of the work already, all you need to do now is  ask for their business . Don’t talk yourself out of the sale- ask for their business and don’t add any more information as you’ve already provided this. Avoid filling the silence and allow them to think before they respond. The close should feel like a natural progression from the rest of your pitch so asking for their business will seem like the next logical step.

You may need to negotiate with the client. You may get a “maybe” or a “yes” even if they’ve initially declined. Consider offering samples or trial periods.

After a client has decided to buy they want to get the best deal. There are rules:

• Know your price  – know your numbers beforehand and decide when you have to walk away from the deal. If a client can’t afford to pay what your goods are worth then they might not be right for your business.
• Be quiet  – let them do the talking, by not talking at the right time clients often negotiate on your behalf.

Deal with rejection respectfully and gracefully

You need to be ok with a “no” and go into the next meeting feeling positive and enthusiastic. The number of companies who won’t buy is always larger than the number who will so anticipate rejection, accept it gracefully and thank the buyers for their time.

Ask for referrals

If you have built up a positive relationship with your prospect ask for referrals to other potential clients. Ensure that you ask for a quick email introduction as a name and phone number is unlikely to generate a reply.

If you have been referred your pitch is likely to be well-received as you are already viewed as credible and worth listening to.

Ensure that you have a follow-up in place

80% of all deals are made in the follow-up so when you end the pitch and walk out of the door you want to already have your follow-up or at least a mechanism to follow up in place. If you leave with no means to contact the client then you will effectively be cold calling when you pick up the phone to make contact again.

But if you have a meeting lined up or a call in the diary then you can leave with a clear time frame for them to consider the proposal and reach a conclusion. This will add urgency without pressure and will increase your chances of success.

Send a follow-up email within 24 hours thanking the client for the meeting despite the outcome. If you made plans for next steps, such as setting up another meeting, getting a referral, sending more information etc., then include this in the message.

Continue to follow-up until you get a yes or a definite no. Never interpret a lack of response as a no. You have to be relentless.

Review and amend your pitch

Think about what went well and what didn’t and alter your pitch.

How to practice your sales pitch

Following the steps above will ensure that your sales pitch is clear, direct and effective, but there is still no replacement for practice. Making a sales pitch is much like acting in that you need to convey the message in a certain way to elicit the reaction that you desire. Very few people can make a great sales pitch on the first attempt, so you will need to practice.

Begin with a solid pitch that is ready to present to a client and read it through until you are familiar with each slide. You are then ready to practice.

Practice for a video-based sales pitch

Many people now deliver sales pitches remotely through online video conferencing platforms such as Zoom or Teams. We now have to build relationships with prospects online, understand their needs online, and present our solutions over video.

Video conferencing simulations allow you to practice delivering a sales pitch in a virtual setting.

Learn more about practicing for your video-based pitch:

• Course: Video based sales pitching

Practice in Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual reality allows you to practice different sales pitching techniques in a safe, realistic environment. You can practice high stakes situations, such as pitching to important clients, as often as you like until you are confident with your approach.

Practicing in this way also allows you to receive feedback on your performance. Through speech recognition and motion detection software, you can receive feedback on eye contact, number of hesitation words used, pace of your voice and other metrics.

Benefits of training in VR:

• Load your own presentation slides into the virtual room to practice with
• Instant feedback on your sales pitch
• Eye contact feedback to help you engage with the clients
• Prepare with realistic environments and audience
• Practice high stakes situations as often as you like
• Identify keywords you are saying and how often

Learn more about how you can practice in VR:

• Course: Sales Pitch and Closing with VR

Best practices • 23 min read

10 sales pitch examples that work (+ tips for writing your own).

Craft an engaging sales pitch to pack your pipeline with high-quality leads.

By Court Bishop, Contributing Writer

Last updated September 16, 2022

Traditionally, a sales pitch is defined as “a talk or a way of talking that is intended to persuade you to buy something.” But here is the thing: People do not like being sold to − our brains are wired to resist sales messages. A sales pitch should not be about convincing a prospective customer to make a purchase. Instead, use a sales pitch to persuade the prospect to take the next step in the sales process. Read on to explore:

What is a sales pitch?

The 5-step sales pitch structure.

• How to write a sales pitch
• Sales pitch examples

Sales pitch templates

A sales pitch is a message or script designed to lead your audience to a certain action, such as scheduling an appointment or demo. It can be formal or informal, verbal or written down. No matter the format, it is important to get it right because the sales pitch sets the tone for the entire customer relationship. A good sales pitch is concise and provides value to the prospect. Use it to begin a conversation, not to sell. The term encompasses many different types of pitches:

One-line sales pitch

Elevator pitch

Phone sales pitch

Email sales pitch

Social media pitch

Presentation sales pitch

Follow-up sales pitch

Investor pitch

Pain-point pitch

One-minute sales pitch

You can use a combination of sales pitches for the same prospect. For example, you might give an elevator pitch at a conference and send an email pitch to a prospect before finally delivering a comprehensive presentation pitch.

Regardless of the situation, the following framework can work for any pitch:

Value proposition

Social proof, engaging question and cta, how do you write a sales pitch.

It has been said that timing is everything. This is especially true when pitching your products or services to someone. Aside from choosing the right timing, you must also choose your target audience wisely. Your prospects will set the tone for your pitch, as you will need to personalise your message in order to establish rapport and form a connection with them. One effective way to grab their attention? Tell a story. Though our brains resist selling, they are receptive to stories . Whether you are communicating with potential customers in person, by email, phone or over social media, ground the pitch in a compelling narrative to keep them interested.

1. Reach out at the right time and connect with the right person

A successful sales pitch is all about timing, according to Courtney Gupta, a community engagement specialist and former SMB account executive at Zendesk. “You can have this amazing sales pitch, but the success of it really depends on timing”, says Gupta. “Sometimes, prospects would love to talk but aren’t looking to change vendors or are in the middle of another deal. Make a note if they provide a better time to reach out.”

“You can have this amazing sales pitch, but the success of it really depends on timing.” Courtney Gupta, Zendesk community engagement specialist

Gupta also emphasises the importance of getting in touch with the right person. “Some salespeople will start off speaking with lower-level management, for example, because that might seem like an easier in, but they don’t always have buying power”, she says. “Whoever is signing the deal (usually VP and above) should be your target.”

2. Make the prospect the hero of your story

The next step is framing your pitch with an engaging narrative. In this story, the prospect is the hero. They have a problem they need to overcome. Your product is the sidekick that will help them do it. Your job as a salesperson is to make the connection between your product and your prospect’s happy ending. Use your value proposition, testimonials and data to support the story. Get creative − Troops, a revenue communications platform, created physical cards to enable storytelling in sales and help sales reps quickly find the right narrative. Other companies write detailed briefs of various sales personas to familiarise reps with different stories. Whatever information or format you use, make sure your pitch always focuses on an outcome. “Before you make your sales pitch, find what the person can gain from the deal going forward”, Gupta advises. “If they’re going to get a promotion at the end of this, learn how you can help them work toward that or how you can set them up for success when they talk to their CEO. Finding out what’s at stake and what’s going to be beneficial to the person you’re selling to is important in any sales pitch.”

“Before you make your sales pitch, find what the person can gain from the deal going forward.” Courtney Gupta

3. Understand the customer’s needs and personalise the solution

You cannot tell the right story if you do not know your audience. Buyers want sales reps to take the time to gain a firm understanding of their business and the challenges they are facing, but the reality does not always match the expectation. Many customers do not believe that sales reps truly understand their problems (or have a way to solve them). Your initial sales pitch should demonstrate your knowledge of the prospect’s business, industry and unique challenges. Most types of sales pitches allow for some time to research the prospective buyer in advance and it is critical to do so. Even just 15 minutes of research on Google News and LinkedIn will go a long way toward inspiring confidence. Elevator pitches are a little different because you will not know who you are pitching ahead of time. In this scenario, tell the story of your target customer. But instead of pitching your company as an HR software platform, for example, you might say: “We help companies of all sizes provide their employees with generous, corporate-quality benefits.” Then, use open-ended questions and active listening to turn the conversation toward the prospect’s specific needs. “A good sales pitch relates the action you want the customer or prospect to take back to why it’s important to them and their company”, says Gupta. “You need something from them, but what can they gain from working with you and your business? There has to be some incentive on their end.”

“A good sales pitch relates the action you want the customer or prospect to take back to why it’s important to them and their company.” Courtney Gupta

4. Start your email pitches with a strong subject line

If you are emailing your pitch, your subject line is the “once upon a time” that leads prospects into your sales story. In many ways, it is a microcosm of your whole sales pitch. An intriguing subject line speaks to prospects on a personal level and persuades them to take the time to read it. We analysed sales emails from 15 different SaaS companies to identify the most effective tactics for writing powerful sales subject lines. Here is what we learned:

• Keep it personal by using the contact’s name and the word “you.” Generic subject lines are easy to ignore and will quickly end up in the trash folder.
• Hook the prospect into your story by writing something meaningful. Include an eye-catching statistic, offer an informational (or controversial) statement or ask a question that demonstrates your knowledge of their industry. Do your research and target a personal pain point.

Crafting subject lines that are relevant to your prospects comes with practice. Consistently A/B test your emails to learn what works and what does not in your messages.

5 sales email examples proven to engage customers

5. Get creative

Go beyond the standard sales pitch email or cold call. There are creative ways to take a pitch to the next level. “If your emails didn’t work, gifts are another avenue”, says Gupta. “Gifts show your brand character. They often make prospects want to take a meeting because they remember you and relate that positive memory to your brand. Even if the timing wasn’t right the first time, they’ll keep those warm, fuzzy feelings in mind in the future.”

“If your emails didn’t work, gifts are another avenue. Gifts show your brand character.” Courtney Gupta

Some gift ideas include:

Company swag

Water bottles

Trendy technology like speakers

Boxes of goodies

6. Keep the pitch length in mind

Buyers do not care about your product or service. They care about their problems. If you spend all your time with a buyer talking about yourself and your company, it will be hard to convince them that you actually want to help them solve their problems. Make your sales pitches concise in order to leave room for listening and engagement. Keeping your pitch brief also forces you to refine it and concentrate on your value proposition. You are less likely to talk about irrelevant features if you are locked into a short length. The ideal sales pitch length depends on the format, of course, but here are some guidelines to get you started:

• Aim for 300 words in your sales emails. A study of cold sales emails found that emails with 1,400 to 1,500 characters (approximately 300 words) showed a substantially higher response rate than emails of 100 words or fewer.
• Keep your cold calls under eight minutes. Chorus, a conversation intelligence platform, discovered that 7.5 minutes is the average length of a cold call that converts into a next step.
• Limit your sales presentation to 18 minutes. Apply the TED Talk principle to your sales presentations. TED Talk speakers are limited to 18-minute presentations for a simple, data-backed reason: After the 18-minute mark, you lose your audience to information overload. Attention wanes, engagement is lost, and it is that much harder to get a “yes.”

If these limitations sound too difficult for you, the problem could be your understanding of your product’s value. Once you are confident in the benefits your offering brings to the table, you will find it much easier to keep your pitch short and engaging. Start by refining your positioning statement .

Great sales pitch examples (and why they work)

We found 10 notable examples to inspire you to craft a winning pitch. These examples cover various types of sales pitches, but they offer lessons that you can apply to any prospect.

• 1. Adam Goldstein two-sentence pitch
• 2. G2Crowd elevator pitch
• 3. Mark Cuban phone pitch
• 4. Ryan Robinson email pitch
• 5. LinkedIn or Twitter personalised social media pitch
• 6. Scrub Daddy sales presentation
• 7. MailboxValidator follow-up sales pitch
• 8. Party on Demand unconventional investor pitch
• 9. Brightwheel personal pain-point pitch
• 10. Formcraft speedy sales pitch

Sales pitch example #1: Adam Goldstein’s two-sentence pitch

Can you summarize your offering in one to two sentences? Adam Goldstein can. The CEO and co-founder of travel-deal site Hipmunk was struggling to get funding for his startup. He reached out to the CEO of United Airlines with the following two-sentence pitch:

The CEO responded directly to Goldstein within 15 minutes. Hipmunk went on to secure over $55 million from investors.

Takeaway: You need a one-liner ready to go for those brief moments of opportunity (like a chance meeting in an airport queue or a long-shot tweet). Consider it your logline—in Hollywood, a logline is a one- to two-sentence summary of a movie. Your own logline should answer the following questions:

What is your presentation about?

What does your startup or product/service do?

What’s your idea?

For example, Google’s logline was simply, “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible.” It’s short and memorable, and it explains what Google does and what benefits it offers.

Try creating a logline that’s under 140 characters to help your audience immediately digest the information and determine if they want to hear more.

Sales pitch example #2: G2Crowd elevator pitch

G2Crowd is a platform that gives software users the opportunity to share their opinions on a product. Here’s the company’s elevator pitch :

“G2Crowd is the user voice platform for people to be able to say how they actually think about software and not be told by the analysts or people who don’t use it, or the reference from your best customers,” the pitch begins. “You’re actually hearing directly from the user and engaging with people who actually use the product.”

Although less than 20 seconds long, the pitch clearly conveys the purpose of the G2 platform while explaining the problem that it solves for software users.

Takeaway: Shorter is often better. A concise sales pitch forces you to explain your product or service in layperson’s terms—and in a way that quickly generates interest. A short and snappy pitch will likely stick with a prospect longer than a rambling pitch that lists all your product’s features.

Aim to create a 20- to 30-second elevator pitch that answers the following questions:

What does your product or service do?

What distinguishes your product or service?

What are your product or service goals?

Write down what you want to say. Cut out jargon and be specific. For example, if your company “eliminates the need for insurance agents to use a lot of paper,” you could instead say, “Our e-signature platform cuts down on the overwhelming amount of paper that insurance agents have to use.”

Sales pitch example #3: Mark Cuban’s phone pitch

Back in the early 2000s, billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban was the new owner of the Dallas Mavericks. The team was struggling to win games, which resulted in low ticket sales.

To get ticket sales back up, Cuban led the charge with his sales team by getting on the phone with former season ticket holders.

“This is Mark Cuban, the new owner of the Dallas Mavericks,” Cuban would say. “I know you’ve been to a game, and I just wanted to sit here and tell you we’d love to have you back.”

At the beginning of these conversations, Cuban was met with objections , like how bad the team was. In response, he would remind former ticket holders of their own experiences going to games as a kid—when it didn’t matter if a team was winning or losing. The point was the game itself. The arena. The popcorn and cheering and time with parents, friends, neighbors, etc. It was a unique experience that cost only $8 a ticket and provided more value than going to the movies or McDonald’s.

His approach worked, and ticket sales began to climb. Cuban bought the Mavericks for $280 million. The team is now valued at $2.7 billion .

Takeaway: During a phone pitch, sell prospects on the benefits, not the features. Cuban didn’t promote good seats, talented team players, and tasty popcorn. Instead, he promoted a special family experience—something he and his team knew that former season ticket holders valued.

When crafting a phone sales pitch script , include the specific benefits that the buyer will experience thanks to your product or service. Maybe you’re a B2B company that offers sales training courses. Rather than listing all the classes you offer, you could explain how your training helps reps become more confident with cold calls and emails, increasing their win rate.

Also, don’t give the impression that your product or service is perfect—Cuban admitted that he didn’t know if the team would play well or not. People are more apt to trust you if you’re honest about the bad. In fact, when people are reviewing product ratings, a 4.5 rating draws in more customers than a perfect 5, according to Northwestern University’s Medill Spiegel Research Center. Be upfront about what your product or service lacks, but explain how you’re different from competitors and how you can still help solve the prospect’s problems.

Sales pitch example #4: Ryan Robinson’s email pitch

Content marketing consultant Ryan Robinson often contacts businesses to offer his services. But before ever making his pitch, he finds something of value to give to the prospect, such as a share on Twitter. He then includes what he did for the recipient in his pitch.

The following email netted Robinson a $10,000/m retainer in the end:

Takeaway: “Your emails should provide value upfront,” Robinson says. Information about himself and his services doesn’t appear until the third paragraph. Only then does he open the door to give a more detailed pitch and ask for a conversation.

Oren Klaff, author of Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea , adds to this line of thought: “Never tell the buyer what you want them to do—you never pressure them for a yes. You let them tell you they want to buy.”

Your email pitch needs to stand out from the white noise in your prospect’s inbox. Send a guide or resource that helps your potential customer overcome a challenge. For example, maybe you see on your prospect’s website that they’re busy hiring a virtual sales team . Because you work for a human resources company, you send the prospect an ebook about onboarding virtual employees before making your pitch.

Sales pitch example #5: LinkedIn or Twitter personalized social media pitch

When cold-pitching products or services to experts and influencers in your field, weave personal details from their social media bios and profiles into your outreach message. Take a few minutes to check out their LinkedIn or Twitter accounts, and use the information you find to your advantage.

Of course, you don’t want to come off as creepy, so if they have a public profile, avoid doing a “deep dive”—you definitely don’t want to reference something from 150 weeks ago that they may not even remember. Stick to mentioning information that is either readily available from a quick skim or an interesting piece of content they produced.

Let these decision-makers know you care enough to have taken the time to learn a little bit about them before reaching out. Show them that you value their time, too, by keeping your message brief.

Image source: Highspot

Takeaway: Personalize your pitch by looking at the prospect’s LinkedIn or Twitter accounts—take 10 to 20 minutes to find valuable insights about the buyer before contacting them.

Lead with a social talking point—such as a mutual connection or experience you’ve shared—to establish rapport and show you’ve done your research. Then, connect your offering with the prospect’s needs. You should send several messages to build trust before asking for an appointment.

Sales pitch example #6: Scrub Daddy’s sales presentation

A sales presentation pitch is typically more in-depth than the other pitches we’ve mentioned. Aaron Krause’s sales presentation on season 4 of Shark Tank is worth revisiting:

The smiling sponge product received $200,000 from Shark investor Lori Greiner and has made more than $50 million in sales .

Takeaway: Include eye-catching visuals and demonstrations in your sales presentation. In the example above, not only is the Scrub Daddy logo clearly visible, but Krause also incorporates a demo of the Scrub Daddy tackling tough stains. Krause gives the Sharks a glimpse of how the product solves a common household problem.

This approach follows the tried-and-true adage, “Show, don’t tell.” For your own presentation, paint a picture of what your customer’s life will look like if they buy what you’re selling. Adding charts, graphs, and photos can make your pitch even more interesting for the prospect.

Check out our 13 tips for a perfect, Shark Tank -worthy sales presentation.

Sales pitch example #7: MailboxValidator’s follow-up sales pitch

A follow-up sales pitch can be a phone call, email, or social media message. A MailboxValidator team member sent this follow-up pitch after meeting a prospect at an event:

The email highlights where the two met and references their conversation. Only in the third paragraph does the sender, Janet, mention Jim’s problem and how she can help. She then asks directly for an appointment.

Takeaway: Remember, the point of the sales pitch is to get the prospect to the next step (e.g., another conversation or an appointment). Janet includes a clear CTA at the end of her pitch—a phone call. She suggests a time for them to talk and puts the ball in Jim’s court.

In your follow-up emails , propose specific days and times for a conversation, especially if you’ve already established trust with the recipient. Don’t simply say, “Would you like to meet?” Prompt the recipient to take action.

Sales pitch example #8: Party on Demand’s unconventional investor pitch

If you’re not excited about your product or service, how do you expect anyone else to be?

While delivering his Startupfest pitch, Willie G certainly didn’t lack excitement. In a room full of people pitching tech solutions, Willie pitched a unique party experience. He brought his larger-than-life personality to the stage and used it—and every moment—to his advantage.

Though not everyone has the same type of charisma, Willie G’s pitch wasn’t necessarily about him . His pitch worked because he was energetic, fun, and joyful—everything a party should be. He did something different and made an impression.

Takeaway: A bold, unconventional approach may be appropriate if it fits your personality as well as your brand’s personality. But if you’re going to “break” the sales-pitching rules, you must first know them better than anyone else and know your product or service inside and out.

Keep in mind, too, that this tactic won’t work for every product or service. Make sure that you’ve developed at least a few general branding guidelines and that the “tone” of your pitch matches your brand’s voice. You have to do your research and be confident that a big swing is the best way to attract the right kind of attention to what you have to offer.

Sales pitch example #9: Brightwheel’s personal pain-point pitch

Here’s another Shark Tank success story. At the start of his pitch, Brightwheel founder and CEO Dave Vasen shows he did his research by stating that he knows all the Shark investors are parents. He then touches on a personal pain point for parents of toddlers and pre-K children.

Vasen’s pitch highlights a pain point that every parent or guardian experiences: not knowing what their kid is doing in daycare or preschool every day. And with 1.62 million preschoolers in the U.S. alone, that’s a lot of not knowing. He relates to his audience through a shared experience—one that is especially close to the heart.

He also uses himself and his daughter as a case study, providing solid proof that the solution works. This not only appeals to the investors’ emotions but also shows them that Vasen truly believes in his product—so much so that he was able to get Brightwheel into 2,500 schools across the country.

Brightwheel ended up raising $600,000 from Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca. Since then, the company has been through several rounds of funding and is now valued at $600 million .

Takeaway: A great way to find success is to recognize a pain point that many people face and develop a solution. And instead of going deep into the technical aspects of a product, focus on the emotional, real-life benefits that come with using it.

Sales pitch example #10: Formcraft’s speedy sales pitch

Matt Macnamara of architecture firm Formcraft demonstrates that sometimes it doesn’t take more than 60 seconds to catch a prospect’s attention. In his straightforward, one-minute pitch, he explains exactly what his company can do for Philadelphia business tenants and even allows time for the listener to daydream about their ideal office space.

Although this video is an explanation of how he goes about pitching to potential clients, it also serves as a pitch in itself. Macnamara doesn’t ever bring up material or labor costs, blueprints, or details about his business. What he does do is give the audience permission to visualize what a better workspace could look like. He focuses on the benefits that Formcraft can provide rather than on the company itself.

To add more intrigue, he puts a timer in the bottom right corner of the video to prove to the viewer that he can, in fact, make an engaging pitch in only one minute. He also includes a CTA, saying he can help others create a one-minute pitch, which broadens his audience even further.

Takeaway: Practice distilling your company’s product or service down to its essence, and time yourself to stay accountable. Remember to focus on your target audience’s end goals. Highlight the benefits they’ll experience, not the details of “how” they’ll get there. You don’t want to waste time explaining the processes behind what you offer.

Feeling inspired now? Time to take that mojo and run with it. Get started with these email templates from Zendesk’s own sales experts.

7 cold email templates that skyrocket response rates

That first reply to your email is often the hardest to get, especially when you are going in cold. These email templates will help you tailor your cold pitch to the situation.

12 sales email templates for every stage of the sales pipeline

It is tempting to think the sales pitch is only the entry point to the deal cycle. But the truth is, you are pitching your product or service until you close the deal. This collection of sales email templates helps you create and refine your sales pitch for each stage of the cycle, from first contact to closing.

10 follow-up email templates to boost your sales

You nailed the elevator pitch, the cold call, and the sales presentation, but what happens after will determine your success. Do not put all this effort into your sales pitch only to send a generic follow-up. Use tailored resources (such as sales videos ) and personal connections to add value. These templates will empower you to craft follow-up emails that keep the conversation going.

The complete guide to sales emails (based on what really works)

Use these sales pitch examples to make your own

The goal of a sales pitch is to present your product or service in a way that leaves the audience wanting to know more. Incorporate approaches from the examples above into your own sales pitches. Whatever the occasion, you will be prepared with a compelling message anytime you need to make a pitch. Wish you had more time to spend researching your leads and writing the perfect pitch? Learn how Zendesk Sell can help you cut down on busy work and get back to the work that matters.

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How to Build a Winning Sales Pitch Script (+ Examples)

• February 4, 2022

With competition heating up in nearly every industry, standing out and nailing your pitch is the difference between closing a deal and taking a loss. 

Going into a pitch unprepared, fumbling over your words, and talking in circles shows a lack of consideration and professionalism – not exactly the first impression you want to make with a prospect.

But with the right methodology and approach, you can set your sales reps up for having successful and meaningful conversations that turn prospects into leads. If you’re looking to level up your calls, it’s smart to consider creating sales pitch scripts.

Types of Sales Pitch Scripts

• Beating the competition
• Product demo

What is a Sales Pitch Script?

A sales pitch is a discussion between sales reps and a prospective customer about a product or service. It’s ideally a well-structured and clearly directed conversation that’s designed to bring both parties into a mutually beneficial opportunity.

A sales script is process documentation that takes the form of a standard operating procedure (SOP) or guide that salespeople use when talking to a lead and delivering their pitch. 

Sales scripts are designed to help navigate the stages of a standard sales pitch and provide guidance as sellers strategically steer the conversation. Having a reference for guiding these conversations reduces stress and supports sellers in conducting a productive conversation. 

A sales pitch script can be as detailed as a word-for-word conversation, or as broad as a list of key talking points. No matter your pitch style or approach, sales scripts are useful sales prospecting tools. A company that isn’t using scripts at all is likely missing out on potential revenue.

Types of Sales Scripts

A sales pitch can take many forms– sometimes you’re in-person and need to prepare for a room with an audience, sometimes you’re meeting over Zoom and need to prepare for the unique nuances of video calls. Maybe you’re cold calling for the first time and your prospect is hard to reach, so you need to leave a voicemail or send a follow-up email. Outreach is unique to every company.

Because each pitch is a unique case, it will also require a unique approach – it’s important to be prepared for anything.

Here are some of the types of scripts that could be beneficial to your sales team:

Depending on your company culture and industry, you may decide to implement several types of sales pitch scripts. Determine which scripts work best for your sales strategy so your sales reps feel prepared and empowered to close the deal– or, at minimum, secure positive next steps.

Benefits of Using Sales Pitch Scripts

Here are the benefits that creating and using sales cold pitch scripts have on sales organizations:

1. More prepared sales team

Without a solid concept of the important talking points or an ideal trajectory of where the conversation should go, your sales team can end up looking sloppy, unprepared, or unreliable. Having at least the bones of a script to help shape the course of the conversation can be extremely valuable when engaging with prospects.

2. Boost sales efficiency & productivity

Using a sales pitch script can help minimize the frequency of low-performance days by giving your sales reps an easy guide to follow. While most experienced sellers will tweak or improvise some of the script, they will always have a safety net to fall back on if they’re ever not feeling as creative or they need to redirect the conversation.

3. More effective sales rep training

With a documented sales pitch script in place, you can train new hires faster and more effectively. They’ll have something they can easily reference during their training period, which will speed up their ramping time. You can be confident that they won’t trip over their words on their first client call, which will build their confidence and help them make a good connection with prospects faster.

4. Better communication with prospects

Having a sales pitch script enables your team to listen better by decreasing stress or having to think on their feet. When they’re so concentrated on what they’re saying, it becomes very difficult to listen effectively. With a written script, sellers have their thoughts and words clearly in mind and you can be confident that your messaging is consistent. 

Sales scripts can get a bad reputation. The fact is, a strong sales script can be a game-changer for your company and your sales team.

How to Write a Script for Your Sales’ Pitches

Writing a sales pitch script prepares sales reps for any pitch, providing a balance of structure and flexibility that allows room for adjustments based on each prospect and conversation.

It should include all the information and material your sales team will need to be successful, like product or service details, company background, and success stories.

The key to writing a strong sales pitch script is to lead the conversation with intention. It’s all about showing prospects that you have your act together, your product is worthwhile, and you can confidently navigate them through their customer journey.

Here are the essential elements of a solid sales pitch script:

The opener is an opportunity to greet your prospect and make a good impression right from the jump. This typically involves sharing your name and company name, exchanging niceties, thanking them for agreeing to speak with you, and kicking off the conversation with a question that encourages small talk.

The agenda should outline the flow of the conversation. You’ll always want to start with the reason for your outreach, often phrased in a way that presents your service or product as a solution to their problem or pain point. Your agenda should always include a designated time for questions so your prospect knows you’re attentive to their needs and concerns.

3. Problem or opportunity

Identifying the problem or opportunity for your prospect is the true beginning of your actual sales pitch. During this portion, you’ll want to reiterate the main issue or problem, and then identify the underlying causes that you discovered during your research. Making a personalized observation or recommendation will paint you as an expert they’ll want on their side.

4. Proposed solution

The proposed solution portion of your script explains the product or service you’re offering – one that you believe will solve the prospect’s problem and help them reach their goals. This section also educates your prospect on how your solution works, or at minimum the basics. Sometimes sellers will use a product demo to give a visual representation and make it easier to understand a product’s function and application.

5. Benefits & value

This section is where you make your prospect see the value of your solution. To do this, share some key benefits of your product or service and the positive impact it has had on current clients. Share your unique selling points and what makes you different, explaining why your product or service is the best choice for them compared to other similar options.

6. Recap & CTA

To close out the conversation, recap the most influential talking points and encourage the prospect to take some sort of action. You can simply summarize your sales pitch – problem, solution, benefits – and discuss typical next steps, whether that’s to sign the contract or to schedule another meeting. Your company’s unique sales process will determine your optimal next steps.

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7 Tips for Writing an Effective Cold Sales Pitch Script

1. be focused, compelling, and concise.

A good sales pitch should convey the intended message in a concise and compelling manner. If your pitch is on point and to the point, you’re on the right track to making a meaningful client connection.

The first few minutes of a sales pitch will determine the direction of the interactions to follow. Be sure to hit all your discussion points and flow through the conversation tactfully. Remember – this is your opportunity to convince the prospect about the superiority of your service or product.

2. Establish rapport

Establishing a friendly, sympathetic, and cooperative relationship between you and your prospect is one of the most impactful ways to nail your sales script. 

Knowing they can trust you or simply that they like you is the difference between landing a sale and being written off. Find a way to connect with each prospect and what makes them unique. It also never hurts to try for a laugh – people remember conversations that left them in good spirits!

3. Prepare for objections

No matter how solid your sales pitch is, there will always be people who are iffy to take the plunge– it’s simply the reality of sales. 

Preparing yourself for common objections or concerns will help you navigate those difficult conversations. 

Here are some common pushbacks that you might encounter and should have a response for:

• They’re happy with a competitor.
• Your product/service is out of their budget.
• They’re not authorized to sign off on it.
• They don’t see the benefit of your product/service.
• They’re busy at the moment.
• They don’t want to get stuck in a contract.
• They’re simply not interested.

If you can prepare for these objections, you won’t feel caught off guard and you can provide a more direct solution.

4. Hone in on target audience

If you’re not targeting the right audience, your pitch won’t go well – no matter how much or how well you prepare. 

Take the time to really get to know your targeted audience – figure out what their pain points are or what makes them unique, and learn to see the issue from their perspective. Spending time and resources going after prospects whose needs don’t align with your product and services won’t get you very far – instead, determine who would truly benefit from your offerings and make sure to tailor your pitch accordingly.

5. Identify the right solution

If you happen to offer a variety of products or services, do your research to determine which of your solutions is most applicable to each prospect you pitch to. 

By showing prospects that you took the time to identify a specific product that’s aimed at resolving their particular roadblocks, you’re demonstrating your dedication to providing a tailored solution. Pushing all your services – unless there is a genuine benefit to the prospect – or not providing specific enough recommendations can make you seem artificial and detached. 

6. Prepare for common questions

Even if you cover all your bases thoroughly during your pitch, questions are inevitable, and they’re actually a great thing – questions typically mean your prospect is engaged. 

Prepare for a smooth dialogue by jotting down the most common questions your sales reps hear during pitches and crafting a response. Being able to answer those FAQs will further demonstrate your expertise in the field.

7. Use data

In sales, you deal with a lot of numbers. The main reason: it’s hard to argue with them. 

Presenting data is an efficient way of letting the value of your product speak for itself. Come prepared with data that illustrates that impact – recent case studies, client wins, and monthly or quarterly reports are all great ways to demonstrate your value using data. 

However, be sure not to data dump on your prospect – just bring the data that tells the best story about your solution.

Things to Avoid In Your Sales Pitch Script

The way you approach your sales pitch can make the difference between landing a sale or dealing with rejection. 

Knowing what not to do during a sales pitch is equally as important as knowing best practices and tips for closing – it’s all about the impression you make. Small, subtle things can significantly sway the outcome of your pitch.

Here are some things to avoid in your sales pitch script for a more constructive conversation:

1. Using “You” as much as possible

Frequently using “you” in a sales pitch can come off somewhat aggressive. It can make prospects feel uncomfortable or like they’re in the hot seat, when the goal of your conversation should be to put them at ease. 

Instead, focus on your company and the solution or services you provide. Saying “Our product can solve X issue” or “Our services can remedy X pain point“ instead of “Your processes aren’t efficient” or “Your services could use improvement” will have a much greater impact and build trust.

2. Sounding robotic

As common as sales pitch scripts are, you don’t want prospects to be able to tell you’re using a script. 

Sounding like you’re reading from a script makes for awkward, stale, inauthentic conversation. To avoid sounding robotic, commit to practicing your pitch and running through the essential elements of the script so you sound more natural – you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.

3. Thinking like a seller

The quickest way to lose a lead is by going into a pitch thinking only like a seller.

Showing empathy for your prospect’s perspective is an impactful way of gaining trust and building rapport. If prospects think you’re only viewing the partnership from a seller’s perspective, they’re less include to trust you and are going to be resistant, most likely feeling like you don’t have their best interest in mind.

4. Doing all the talking

As tempting as it is to control the conversation, doing all the talking during a pitch can actually do more harm than good. 

No one likes being talked at, and it definitely doesn’t make for a good first impression. You’ll lose prospects’ attention if you ramble at them – instead, you want to aim for an open, balanced dialogue. Be sure to pause for feedback and make time for questions.

5. Sticking exactly to the script

Though the script is there to provide guidance and structure, you don’t always need to follow it exactly to a T.

Don’t think of your sales pitch script as a rigid, repeatable, word-for-word checklist with no room for deviation — think of it more as a guide . Any successful sales conversation will have some degree of improvisation and finesse, if and when appropriate.

3 Examples of the Best Sales Call Script Templates

If you’re looking for inspiration to craft your sales pitch script, we’ve compiled 3 of the best sales pitch script templates for you to explore:

1. Selling Signals

Selling Signals  has a generic sales call script that you can customize to fit your specific needs. It includes the verbiage and crucial elements featured in some of the most effective sales call scripts, including a personable and professional opening, a problem-oriented sales pitch, and a strong call-to-action (CTA) that should close the deal.

Hubspot offers several unique sales pitch script templates that provide useful guidance based on the type of outreach – discovery sales call, in-person product demo, etc. Each template covers various scenarios like handling objections, information overload, and being hung up on, so there’s nothing your sales team won’t be prepared for.

3. Sales Scripter

Sales Scripter takes a unique approach to creating personalized sales pitch script templates. Simply enter your information into the software, and it will “interview” you to gather the key elements that should shape your sales scripts. The software will then use the information you provided to fill in the details. You can make the scripts your own by easily modifying the software-generated templates based on your company goals or industry.

Having a baseline sales script to help shape the course of a product pitch conversation can be extremely valuable when engaging with prospects. 

A sales call script gives your sales reps the right words, talking points, and conversational flow to efficiently move prospects toward the finish line — a closed deal. Regardless, the script should be relatively structured and include areas that are easy to fill in so your sellers can personalize it as necessary.

When you provide your sales team with a sales pitch script that is well-developed, they’ll have the right guidance to go from one stage of the sales funnel to the next in a proven model that actually produces positive outcomes. 

But remember: creating a successful sales script is an ongoing process. By regularly revisiting and updating your script, you’ll continue to find new, impactful ways to close more deals. Even if you only do it once a quarter or even just once a year, that alone can make a huge difference to your bottom line. 

With Whatfix, you can empower your sales team to sell better. Using guided walkthroughs and embedded self-help widgets, you can support your sales teams with performing routine and advanced CRM processes, and much more. Explore Whatfix’s digital adoption platform today.

Request a demo to see how Whatfix empowers organizations to improve end-user adoption and provide on-demand customer support

10 Sales Pitch Examples to Boost Your Close Rate

How you approach your sales pitch could be the difference between a hard no from your prospect or a high-value deal. As the saying goes, first impressions last, which is why we’ve compiled this list of sales pitch examples to help you get the conversation started on the right foot.

But what does a good sales pitch look like, and how can you design a winning sales pitch of your own? We’ll answer these burning questions and more below—so keep reading.

In this post, we’ll look at 10 sales pitch ideas that will help you create your own. We’ll also outline some good and bad examples for each.

Table of Contents

What is a sales pitch, the different types of sales pitches, how to structure your sales pitch, 1. lead with a question, 2. create a dichotomy, 3. tell a good story.

• 4. Use Flattery (If It’s Genuine)

5. Follow the Rule of Three

6. create a sense of urgency, 7. let the product speak.

• 8. Acknowledge the Prospect’s Emotions

9. Show Supporting Data

10. remember the customer, additional tips to dazzle your prospect.

A sales pitch is a concise, persuasive speech that explains what your product is, communicates its value, and encourages the customer to make a purchase. 

It’s your chance to turn a prospect’s interest into action. But it can also make or break a deal. If your buyer isn’t hooked by what you have to say, they likely won’t purchase your product.

You may develop a winning sales pitch structure based on your most common sales scenario. But there are different ways to engage with your prospects, so adapting your pitch to the situation at hand is crucial. 

The primary sales pitch categories you will likely encounter include the following:

• Elevator pitch: This is a fast-paced pitch , typically used in situations where you have a limited time to grab your prospect’s attention and get your point across as quickly as possible. A no-frills pitch that gets right to the point in the simplest terms is the best approach here.
• Email pitch: Executing your sales pitch over email can be challenging, especially when you consider that getting your prospect to open the email is half the battle. A punchy subject line stipulating your value proposition and a concise email with a clear CTA can go a long way.
• Phone pitch: Pitching over the phone is one of the most common sales pitch types and comes with its own challenges. Consider the best time of the day to call your prospect, earn their trust by being honest, and talk and connect with them for the best results.
• Social media pitch: A modern sales pitch approach, the social media pitch can lead to lucrative deals, but there are a few obstacles to navigate. To ensure you don’t look like a spammer, engage with your prospect on something specific and relevant you found in their profile and build on that while keeping things professional.
• Video pitch: The video pitch method combines the advantages of in-person, call-based, and text-based pitches, which you can place strategically in messaging.

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Building a solid pitch requires some thought. With careful consideration, you can create a pitch roadmap to guide you through the conversation. When planning your pitch, try to stick to the following proven framework. 

Identify the issue

Step one is to highlight or pose a question related to the problem your product or service will solve. You could open with a real-life example or impactful statistic that illustrates the gravity of the issue and the need to resolve it.

Communicate your value proposition

Let your prospect know what your company offers and what sets you apart from the competition. Focus on the problem identified and what your product or service does to solve the issue. Highlight the benefits they can look forward to when working with you.

Explain the process

Next, you’ll provide the prospect with more details on how you and your team will help their business. What steps will you take, how will you approach them, and what makes your method unique? Provide as much detail as possible, but keep your explanation concise and engaging.

Establish trust

Building a relationship with your prospect begins with trust. And you can establish trust in several ways, including:

• Case studies: Include an example of a company with a similar problem you’ve successfully helped with your product or service. Break down the nature of the problem and the steps your business took to resolve it.
• Client testimonials: Incorporate statements from happy clients who have benefited from your product or service. Ask the client for permission to include their full name and company name as part of the pitch, as this will help you establish credibility.
• Industry accolades: Has your company achieved any awards or reached a significant milestone? If so, mentioning these achievements will go a long way to developing trust.

Initiate a conversation

In closing, ask your prospect an open-ended question to spark a conversation. In other words, ask a question your prospect cannot answer with a simple “yes” or “no.”

Some examples include the following:

• What risks could your business face if this problem isn’t resolved?
• What are your company’s top priorities for the coming fiscal year?
• What are some of the challenges you’ve experienced in delivering your product or service?

10 best sales pitch examples to increase sales

Now that we’ve pinned down the basic structure let’s dig into some of the best sales pitch examples to boost your close rate.

Preferably a question that compels them to see their problem from a different perspective. If the question promises valuable information, they’ll want to know the answer and will stay engaged through the next part of the pitch. 

Good Example: A digital marketing sales rep might start a pitch with, “Did you know Instagram is currently working against you?” This question hints at important information that they’re missing and makes them reconsider their current social media strategy. The sales rep can then provide an answer that aligns with the value of buying their social media services.

Bad Example : If your question isn’t compelling enough, your customer might not stick around for more of your pitch. “Are you looking for a way to _____?” is a commonly used (but very ineffective) question that PhoneBurner warns against since it’s worded in a way that’s likely to elicit a “no” response. Your opening question should have your target dying to know more.

This pitch follows a three-step process. Start by stating a truth. Then, introduce another truth that contradicts the first truth. Finally, bring in your product and show how it can resolve the problem. 

Good Example : In an episode of Shark Tank, the creators of DARTdrones used the dichotomy technique effectively in their pitch . They started by explaining that drones are a beneficial piece of technology. Then, they contradicted this truth by stating that drones are prone to crashing. Their solution was their training course for drone pilots. 

Bad Example : If your product doesn’t offer a realistic solution for the problem, the dichotomy won’t be effective . Make sure you draw a clear line between your product and the problem introduced in your pitch. 

As Ryan Dohrn says , “People remember stories 75% of the time. People remember facts and stats less than 1% of the time.”

Stories are engaging. Once a buyer is emotionally invested in your story, they will be more likely to care about your product. But avoid introducing your product at the beginning of the story. It’s best to weave in your product during the middle or end once the listener is fully engaged in what you have to say.

Good Example:  During his pitches, Backroads CEO Tom Hale likes to tell the origin story of founding his travel company. Hale has always disliked mass tourism, and one night while working in Las Vegas he woke up in a cold sweat with a brilliant idea. He got to work and by 8 AM had a completed plan for Backroads, a slow-tourism outdoor-focused travel company. This story works with his prospects because it shows that there is authentic passion behind the product .  

Bad Example : If your story is confusing or boring , your customers won’t be interested. If that happens, they likely won’t feel the emotional attachment you were counting on. Remember, your company’s story doesn’t need to be a verbatim account of everything that happened—keep the good parts and skip over the filler.

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4. Use Flattery (If It’s Genuine)

Like they say, flattery will get you everywhere. People like being complimented, so use this to your advantage during your sales pitch. Sure, the customer might realize what you are doing, but deep down, they’ll be pleased and will have a positive impression of your pitch.

“They only made this specific model of laptop in a limited run to test the market.”

Good Example : This suggestion from  Investopedia  is a perfect example of a sales pitch with the  right amount of flattery . As you can see, it doesn’t explicitly complement the prospective client. Instead, the sales rep  subtly  compliments the client. By mentioning this was a “limited run” product, the sales rep shows that the client is important or special enough for this exclusive product.

Bad   Example : If a sales rep over-compliments the potential customer, particularly on personal attributes (“gee, that’s the sharpest tie I’ve ever seen!”), it can feel  inauthentic or creepy . Make sure to present your flattery so that it comes across as genuine and helps build a positive rapport with the customer.

Instead of overwhelming your prospects with endless facts, choose three key elements that you want them to retain in their minds. This will help your buyer remember your product while helping you keep the pitch concise.

Good Example:  Of course, your product has more than three exciting aspects, but you need to  narrow down the key points  to make this pitch effective. If you pitch a food delivery app, the three points could be: 1) ease of using the app, 2) how quickly the food is delivered, and 3) customer satisfaction reviews. If you’re pitching a complex SaaS product with tons of bells and whistles, do as much research as you can upfront to present the prospect with the three benefits most relevant to their specific business.

Bad Example:  While simplicity is usually the best policy, it can also get you in trouble here.  Speaking from experience , we know that almost every CRM tool on the market claims to be easy to use, powerful, and affordable.  In a crowded market, you need to get specific.  So, what are three selling points  you  can make that your competitors can’t?

Have you ever thought you were about to close a deal only to have the customer drag their feet? It’s frustrating to put in the work only for a customer to delay the deal. During your pitch, it helps to create a sense of urgency so the customer will feel compelled to close the deal before they float away.

Good Example :  Play off of FOMO  (fear of missing out) during your sales pitch. Imagine a sales rep for an advertising agency pitching their services to a potential client. During the pitch, the sales rep should mention that they only have the bandwidth to accept a “few additional clients” at the moment. This shows the potential client that they need to decide immediately to avoid missing out on the opportunity to work with the agency. 

Bad Example :  Telling the client to “take their time”  or to “reach out when they are ready” doesn’t create a sense of urgency. Instead, this lets the client off the hook and encourages them to drag their feet. 

Words can only go so far. Instead of overexplaining the product, let the customers try it out for themselves. When a customer has the chance to see the product in action, they’ll understand how it works and why they need it. 

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‍ Good Examples:  In this video, you’ll see the salesman Joe Ades demonstrating his product in New York City’s Union Square. Yes, he’s still talking about the product. But as he speaks, he peels the carrots. With a product like a vegetable peeler, showing how it works is more effective than just talking about it. United Building Maintenance uses an effective tactic to differentiate its commercial cleaning company. When their sales reps arrive at a prospective client’s building, they walk the halls and speak with the cleaning staff. They point out their inefficient cleaning tools and explain how UBM’s commercial products will make the cleaning job easier. This pitch works because UBM describes how its products are more efficient than the competition.

Even if you’re selling a complicated product, a simple demonstration of the tool can be very persuasive in showing a prospect that what you’re selling is easy to use and genuinely helpful.

Bad Example:  The biggest mistake when using a demo in your sales pitch is  not making sure your product works smoothly ahead of time . Run the demo a few times before doing it in front of your customers. Nothing ends a sale faster than a demonstration showing your product  doesn’t  work.

8. Acknowledge the Prospect’s Emotions

Emotions are a powerful tool. Play on these during your pitch. Of course, you should avoid coming across as manipulative , as this will turn off your customer.

Good Example: Your prospective customer might feel stressed about “ breaking up ” with their current supplier. Play off this emotion during your pitch by coaching the client through the “break-up” process. Your potential customer will feel relieved that they have a strategy for ending their current business relationship.

Bad Example: Playing off emotions just to get a reaction won’t be effective. Customers can easily tell when they are being emotionally manipulated, which won’t make them interested in your product. As a salesperson, your presence should relieve the prospect’s tension—because you’re a helpful, trusted advisor—not add to their tension.

While you don’t want your pitch to seem dry, feel free to toss in a few hard facts to back up your pitch. You need your customers to trust you—and for some people, objective data sets their minds at ease. As long as you can provide legitimate sources for any numbers you throw out, a few well-placed stats will make you seem more credible.

Good Example : Use  easy-to-interpret charts and graphs  to explain your supporting data. Introduce the statistics in digestible chunks instead of throwing them all out at once.

Bad Example: The phrase, “What if I said …” does not instill confidence in your sales pitch. Avoid this or similar sentiments when you are discussing facts. This phrase makes it seem like you can’t prove your claim .

At the end of the day, your pitch is all about convincing the customer to buy your product. Tailor your pitch to each customer instead of using a one-size-fits-all pitch every time.

Good Example : Imagine you are tasked with selling Chromebooks. When you pitch the product to a school, you would highlight how the Chromebook can boost test scores and help students learn 21st century skills. But if you pitch the Chromebooks to a hospital, you would explain how this product can help streamline the patient check-in process and make it easier to store valuable patient information. The same pitch won’t be effective for both groups. Remember to  adjust your pitch so it relates to each customer . 

Bad Example : Using the exact same pitch every time makes it evident that you  didn’t consider the customer . All you have to do is tweak a few phrases or swap out some data points to keep your pitch relevant for each prospect.

While the above basic pitch framework and examples offer comprehensive sales pitch guidance, you could include a few extras to take your delivery up a notch.

Address common objections

Knowing what your prospect might oppose regarding your offering will help you tackle potential objections. But you’ll need to have done a fair amount of research or have some experience with client engagement to pull this off.

Therefore, try to anticipate common objections that might arise based on past experience, and ensure you cover those with sound solutions before the prospect has the chance to object.

Offer a personalized solution

Is your product or service customizable? Offering a tailored solution is a great way to set your service apart from the competition. It lets your prospect know that you are sensitive to their particular needs and that you’re willing to adapt things to ensure those needs are met.

Demonstrate ROI

If you have the data, run the numbers to show your prospect what they can expect in terms of ROI. 

Perhaps your product or service helps businesses save on expenses, in which case you should provide a basic breakdown to show the average savings percentage.

If your product or service positively influences productivity, offer a quantitative example of how much your solution could impact the business’s revenue and growth.

Craft a compelling sales pitch and close more deals

As you work on your own sales pitch, remember to keep it concise. Regardless of which techniques you use, it should be a short speech that immediately hooks your customer. An effective sales pitch is short, convincing, and leaves the customer wanting more. 

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5 Sales Pitch Examples (and How to Craft Your Own)

Learn more about the core elements of a good sales pitch and review sales pitch examples that do things right — and wrong.

Elyse Archer

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We’ve all had to put up with pushy salespeople. I used to be one. Early in my career, I worked for a company that encouraged its salespeople to push for an immediate close, and it was soul-sucking. I’m grateful to have found a better way to sell — one that builds mutually beneficial long-term relationships.

As a sales professional, you don’t have to coerce or pressure. Instead, you need to be a curious problem solver who uses your emotional intelligence to be of service. That begins with your sales pitch.

What you’ll learn:

What is a sales pitch, why are sales pitches important, what are the core elements of a sales pitch, what are the types of sales pitches, what are the do’s and don’ts of sales pitches.

• What are some sales pitch examples based on different scenarios?
• How do you craft your own sales pitch?

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A sales pitch is a script or quick message that lets you share critical information about your product or service with a potential buyer. However, this doesn’t mean it’s all about you or your sale. A sales pitch should focus on your prospect and their needs. In other words, how your product solves their problems.

Think of your sales pitch as an invitation to take the next step, like scheduling a discovery call or setting up a demo. Each time you guide someone to the next step, the invitation will evolve with the course of your sales process . You may make several sales pitches before a final close, and each one will depend on what’s right for the prospect at each stage.

They help you hook the right customers — those who would benefit most from what you have to offer. The right customer will buy what you’re selling, use it, and be better for it. Why? Because you’re not just pitching a product, you’re pitching a solution.

A strong sales pitch also gives you the opportunity to listen, ask questions that showcase your experience helping similar prospects, and share information the prospect can’t find on their own.

Good sales pitches are helpful, specific, and unique. They lead prospects to a clear next step. Your energy and pitch intent are just as important as what you say, so a helpful attitude focused on your prospect’s best interest should guide you.

Successful sales pitches:

• Use a unique, personalized opening. This will help you stand out from generic pitches and show the customer you’re focused on them.
• Acknowledge your prospect’s pain points or goals. A sales pitch should always focus on your prospect and their needs first.
• Include solutions backed by data. This gives your pitch more credibility and helps to build trust with your prospect.
• Close with next steps. Set the stage for further conversation and a future relationship with your prospect.

There are many types of sales pitches, and they vary based on the steps of your sales process and channels used. You can also tailor your pitch for all types of settings, such as:

• Trade shows
• Networking events
• Sales meetings
• Over the phone
• Social media
• Live or recorded videos and webinars

According to Salesforce’s State of Sales Report , 34% of deals are closed with a combination of both virtual and in-person touchpoints, while 32% are closed using only virtual channels. It’s likely that you’ll have to lean on more than one channel or pitch technique to close a deal, so it’s important to think about what these touchpoints might look like. For example, if you pitch someone in person at a trade show, you might follow up with a phone call, then an email, and so forth until you reach a close.

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Depending on your product and industry, your full sales cycle may cover several types of pitches before the final close. No matter which stage you’re in or what channel you’re using, here are some proven guidelines for an effective sales pitch.

• Focus on your prospect’s point of view. Don’t make it all about you. This will help you build a more authentic relationship with the client.
• Be concise. Don’t ramble. Not only will this help you come off as confident and professional, but it shows that you are knowledgeable about your product/service.
• Share who your customers are. Don’t keep secrets. Transparency is huge for building trust and credibility. If you’ve helped similar customers, share that with your client.
• Relax and ask questions. Don’t be aggressive. No one likes a pushy salesperson. Instead, try to understand their point of view and offer ways to help.
• Support your pitch with examples of success supported by visualizations. Don’t bog down presentations with words. An engaging pitch will hold your prospect’s attention and make it memorable.
• Tell a story. Don’t speak in bullet points. The more you can draw your prospect in with a story they can relate to, the more impact it will have.
• Use AI to streamline your sales pitch prep and follow-up. Don’t rely on outdated tools. Better tools will make you more efficient, help you stay organized, and keep you on track.

Sales-pitch examples for different scenarios and channels

Below are three good and two bad sales pitch examples. Many come from my own experience as a sales coach and business owner.

Good: Written note to a cold prospect

The message below could be sent via email, LinkedIn, or any other digital channel. In fact, it’s also the type of language you can use when meeting a potential customer at a networking event.

“I saw [prospect company’s] latest public update on [a project]. Based on the research we’ve compiled about [emerging customer preferences in your industry], I have an idea that could help you [solve your problem or reach a goal]. Would you like to connect to see if this could work for you? Let me know when you’re available for a 10-minute conversation so we can discuss more. In the meantime, I’d be happy to share a case study about how we [helped a similar client with a similar issue.]” 

This pitch works because:

• It has a unique opening.
• It’s specific to the prospect.
• It includes a next step.

Good: Voice message sent via LinkedIn

One day, I logged into LinkedIn to see something novel in my inbox: a voice note that stood out among the written messages. I was intrigued and listened right away. Undeniably, hearing someone’s voice on a digital platform made it feel more personalized. This person used LinkedIn to their advantage intelligently; they connected with me without being pushy or going straight for the close. (You could use the script above to guide the content of your voice message.)

• It stood out on a popular channel.
• The message was personalized.
• The pitch wasn’t all about the offering.

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Good: Pre-recorded personal video

Every day, my team and I receive multiple pitches for the podcast I host. One still stands out to me after more than a year — a person who took the time to record a personal video. In it, he shared why he loved my podcast and pitched his boss as a guest. However, it wasn’t all flattery. What impressed me most was the level of research he did to customize his pitch to my show and its goals.

• It built an immediate connection.
• It was customized.
• It suggested clear next steps.

Bad: Automated, group-blasted LinkedIn message

“Hi. Did the last hire you made have you scrambling to put out fires? If the quality of your talent is lacking, we may have a solution for you. Our virtual assistants are vetted via testing and go through a rigorous assistance rotation with our managers and executives before they’re added to our roster. Take a look at our database and rates: [link].”

This pitch does not work because:

• It’s not personal.
• It relies too heavily on technology and not enough human connection.

Bad: In-person elevator pitch

“Hi, Ms. Archer. Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to share some information about the latest [version of your product offering.] We fixed issues that came to us as feedback from customers like you and added [new features.] Can we meet for lunch to discuss?”

This pitch will not work because:

• It doesn’t focus on the prospect.
• Its tone is “salesy” and superficial.
• The next step is too aggressive for an initial in-person meeting.

How to craft your own sales pitch in 5 steps

Now that you know the key components of a great sales pitch, what to avoid, and how to use different channels to your advantage, it’s time to craft your own pitch.

1. Research clients to find opportunities to help

Above all, the best pitches are service-oriented. Personally, I like to read through client testimonials to remind me of how my offering has helped clients realize big improvements. Think of success as helping prospects address pain points and achieve goals.

2. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes

Think about your prospect (or group of segmented prospects with similar profiles). Consider what’s likely on their mind. The goal here is to think from their point of view, not yours. What would make them pause in their busy day to take notice of your offer and its benefits to them?

3. Customize your message

Your pitch should be specific and, whenever possible, customized to each prospect. You’re more likely to see success with a highly personalized pitch than with a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t consider your prospect’s unique needs or goals.

4. Always provide a next step

At the end of your pitch, explain what the prospect can expect. This includes a next step if they agree your pitch is a great fit for them. Depending on where your prospect is in the sales cycle, each pitch will have a different goal or next step. This might be scheduling a product demo, reference call, or closing the deal .

5. Test and refine

Each time you pitch, you’ll learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Keep track of your results so you can evolve your process and improve the experience for your customers. Pay attention to the types of pitches that bring you the most success, and lean into your unique strengths as a sales rep to pitch more effectively.

Leverage these sales pitch examples & tips to create your own

The most effective sales pitches come down to a few things: they’re service oriented, personalized, transparent, efficient, and focused on building relationships backed by credibility and trust. Whether you’re working to improve your sales pitch or just starting to test the waters, the right tools and coaching will help you automate parts of your sales process, improve your techniques, and be more productive so you can close more deals.

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Elyse Archer is the founder of Superhuman Selling and She Sells. Elyse helps entrepreneurs and sales professionals leverage their natural gifts and build wealth. She is also an international keynote speaker and host of She Sells Radio, where she shares best practices from female sales leaders who ... Read More have accomplished extraordinary goals. Elyse is a 2X Salesforce Top Sales Influencer and has been featured in Forbes and Inc.

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14 Sales Pitch Examples: How to Create a Sales Pitch That Converts

What makes you want to buy something? Be honest—how many times have you listened to a sales rep, and then bought something you might not have bought otherwise?

You listened to a great sales pitch.

A sales pitch is a short presentation of what you have to offer, followed by a request that the recipient work with you. Every sales pitch is unique, but they all follow the same basic structure.

Knowing how to write a well-crafted sales pitch is a crucial skill for sales reps and critical to any business’ success.

We’ve covered a lot of different kinds of emails here on the blog, specifically sales-related emails like follow-ups . Sales pitches are the most overt kind of sales email—they’re the ones that directly ask for sales.

In this blog post, we’re going to show you how to create a great sales pitch and provide you with 14 sales pitch examples you can use to help you craft your own pitch.

What does a good sales pitch look like?

At a glance, a good sales pitch is one that converts the people who receive it. Going deeper than that, a successful sales pitch includes four important components that drive people to convert:

Here’s a closer look at the key traits all effective sales pitches share:

Highly researched

What kind of sales pitches result in the most sales? Those that are personalized for the recipient.

There’s more to it—but ultimately, the deciding factor for your sales pitch email’s success is whether you took the time to research the prospect, their company, their needs, and the solution that would serve them best.

A personalized sales pitch is more than a sales pitch that leads with the recipient’s name. It addresses their specific pain points and offers solutions that are feasible for their budget, type of business, and specific needs.

For example, if your offer is enterprise-level software to make bookkeeping easier for large corporations, your target recipient isn’t a small bagel shop with two employees.

So how do you determine who, exactly, is the right fit for your offer? You do your research.

Use all the resources available to learn everything you possibly can about each prospect. That includes their website, social media profiles, any available information about their business, and who is in charge of making buying decisions.

For that last piece of research, we have a great blog post on strategies for finding the email addresses you need to find for specific people in an organization.

An effective sales pitch email is also short. It needs to be just long enough to make a connection with the recipient by explaining the problem you solve and the kinds of customers you serve. This should take, at maximum, a paragraph or two.

This type of sales pitch is sometimes called the elevator pitch.

A concise sales pitch should include three core elements:

The hook is the moment your pitch captures the prospect’s attention. If your pitch doesn’t hook the prospect within the first few seconds of them opening your email, they will be a lot less likely to convert.

We’ve discussed effective hooks on the blog before. The right hook or opening line for your pitch depends on your offer and the recipient—which is why you need to do enough research on them to understand what kind of hook will work best.

The right hook might be a personal note, like mentioning that you spoke with them at an event a few days prior. Or it might be a statistic they just can’t ignore, like the results your product generated for your other clients in the past six months.

Here’s a sales pitch example with a great hook that we received at Hunter:

After hooking your reader, you need to explain why you’re pitching to them. Maybe it’s because you noticed they struggle with a specific pain point, or maybe it’s because you have a new product available, and they had a great experience with the last product you released.

Mention your value proposition — how your offer will help them resolve a pain point.

There are a few different strategies you can use to do this, like mentioning how well it worked for other clients, dropping a few key facts and statistics about your offer’s efficacy, including a testimonial, or simply asking the prospect how you can help them.

Whichever strategy you determine is best, the goal is to get the reader to visualize themselves using your product to resolve the challenges they’re currently facing.

Be sure to keep your pitch clear, concise, and free from jargon. The prospect needs to completely understand your offer, and they can’t do that if it’s loaded with technical terms or bogged down by convoluted sentences.

Keep it short, keep it clear, and keep it in the simplest language you can use to communicate your offer and its benefits.

Call to action

This last part is where you actually ask the recipient to make a purchase (or, if your email’s goal is to get them on a sales call, ask them to schedule a call with you).

This part needs to be straightforward, clear on exactly what you want the recipient to do (e.g., watch a demo, schedule a call, subscribe, or buy a product), and give short instructions on how to do it.

Your call to action needs to have a sense of urgency—you just pitched them on why your offer is so great; now drive them to take action while it’s fresh in their mind.

Data is your friend. And when it comes to sales pitches, data is one of your best friends because data convinces people.

Think about it—how many times have you heard a claim, then looked it up and found data that convinced you that the claim was true (or false? Or technically true, but cherry picked?)

Similarly, how many times have you argued a point by citing relevant data to support it?

We’d wager a guess you’ve done that at least a few times.

Just like citing statistics makes your argument more persuasive, citing data makes your sales pitch more effective. And as the company offering the product or service, you should have all the relevant data to back up your claims.

Include data that illustrates the value your offer delivers. This data gives the recipient the information they need to come to their own conclusion about your offer: ideally, that it will solve the challenges they’re facing right now.

Here are some examples of data you could include in your pitch:

• Sales figures from previous releases or promotions
• Customer feedback about your product or service
• Case studies about previous products or releases

This data can be about the customer, too. For example, you might include statistics on the kinds of brands that choose to work with you or the demographics your company serves.

By seeing themselves in your satisfied customer base, your email’s recipient is more likely to connect with your brand.

Creates a sense of urgency

As we mentioned above, an effective sales pitch creates a sense of urgency. Urgency comes from the vocabulary the pitch uses and how the message is structured.

Ask yourself this: do these phrases make me want to buy something?

• When you get a chance
• If you’re ready
• Before the end of this promotion
• I’d like to connect

How about these?

• This promotion ends soon

Short, action-oriented words and sentences create a sense of urgency. Whatever you say in your sales pitch, say it in as few words as possible. Make sure you use the active voice, too.

Here’s a quick primer on the active voice versus the passive voice:

• Active: Smart people buy this product
• Passive: This product is purchased by smart people

See the difference? Your sales pitch needs to be clear, direct, and urgent.

This is also a great place to address your recipient’s pain point again. For example, if you’re offering IT services, remind them how much a network outage will cost them for every hour it persists.

What NOT to include in a sales pitch

Just like there are certain components that need to be in every sales pitch, there are a few things that shouldn’t be in any sales pitch you send. Always avoid:

Sales cliches

Sales cliches: you’ve heard ‘em all.

“Buy now and save!”

“Don’t miss out on this AMAZING opportunity!”

“Act now before it’s gone”

When you’re writing a sales pitch that not only hooks potential buyers, but also creates the necessary sense of urgency to get them to buy your offer, it can be easy to wander into cliche territory.

After all, there are only so many ways to tell somebody to buy something. So how do you use a tried-and-true sales formula without sounding like every other sales pitch the recipient has heard?

Stay away from cliche expressions like:

• Bang for your buck
• Move the needle
• Addressing the elephant in the room
• Win-win scenario

If you find yourself wanting to use one of these stock phrases, determine what you’re really trying to say. Then, find a fresher way to communicate your point.

For example, instead of starting your sales pitch with “let’s address the elephant in the room,” you might start it with something like “I know what you’re worried about, and trust me, you aren’t the only one.”

Too many technical details

As we mentioned above, leave the industry-specific jargon out of your sales pitch. There’s one very specific exception to this rule, which we’ll illustrate in one of the example templates later on.

But in most cases, including technical details in your sales pitch will make the prospect less likely to convert, not more.

That’s because people want to feel confident that they’re choosing the right product for their needs. If they come across a term or figure they don’t understand, they won’t be as confident that they’re making the right choice.

Remember, your sales pitch should always affirm that choosing you is the best choice the prospect can make.

There’s another reason why including too many technical details in your pitch will detract from its effectiveness: they take up space.

When people read emails, they skim. That’s why it’s so important to grab their attention with a personalized hook and make them want to read the whole thing. But when someone is skimming an email and seeing nothing but figures and details they can’t immediately understand, their attention wanes.

And when people lose interest, you lose the sale. So make sure that when you do include technical information and other details in your pitch, you include them because they’ll connect with the prospect and make them more excited about your offer.

Promises you can’t keep

This one is critical . Of course, you want to make your sales pitch as appealing to the recipient as possible. You want to make them offers they can’t refuse.

But make sure those are offers you’re actually willing and able to deliver.

There are two ways you can potentially land yourself in hot water by making promises you can’t keep:

• Making unrealistic claims about your product or service
• Offering add-ons, discounts, or other upgrades you can’t actually provide

In the first case, making a false claim can result in buyers feeling disappointed in your product and, potentially, in dangerous situations themselves if the product doesn’t work how you claimed it would work.

Depending on where in the world you and the buyer are located, this could lead to legal trouble for you. In the second scenario, you can similarly find yourself in legal trouble for fraud —and your reputation as a business destroyed.

Even if you do make a sale, making a promise you can’t keep will only result in an unsatisfied customer.

14 sales pitch examples to inspire your next pitch

Need inspiration for your next pitch? Check out these 14 great sales pitch examples:

1. Quick win for {{company}}

This kind of pitch is ideal for the customer who wants something right now. In addition to offering a solution that will instantly net them results, it gives them two tactical strategies for free .

If your goal is to net a new client rather than retain an existing one, giving them something for free can be a very effective way to establish your value and trustworthiness as a brand.

After taking advantage of the two suggestions and seeing their results, the recipient will want more—and they’ll book a call with you to get it.

2. Solution for [[challenge]]

Naturally, a sales pitch is all about offering a solution. And that’s exactly what this template equips you to do.

In some cases, the most effective way to hook the prospect is to jump right into their problem and how your solution will resolve it.

Notice how in this template, the sender immediately backs up their solution with relevant data about past clients’ experiences.

If the only information you have about the prospect is the challenges they’re facing, or if that’s really the only information that’s relevant to your pitch, keep it simple and go with a pitch like this.

3. How do you handle [[problem]]?

In contrast to the last template, this one asks the prospect to have a conversation with the sender about the challenges they’re facing.

If you don’t know the exact nature of the prospect’s challenges, a sales pitch like this can help you do your research while offering a solution. It might lead to a call where you determine that the prospect actually isn’t a great fit for your service—or that they’d be served better by one of your other products.

4. Showcase {{company}} to 730K+ potential customers

This is the kind of pitch that can work great if you’re targeting an established or otherwise high-value prospect.

By leading with an acknowledgment that they’re doing amazing things, you’re opening the door to express how your offer can only help them keep growing and enable them to be even better at what they do.

You’re also making your value immediately clear with a quick stat: you’ve got the power to put their brand in front of a large number of potential buyers.

5. {{first_name}} check out your new cancellation flow

Some products are best demonstrated rather than discussed. If that’s your product, opt for a sales pitch that shows, rather than tells , how it will solve the challenges the prospect is facing.

Also, notice how the sender tells the recipient exactly how long the video is. Nobody wants—or has time—to watch a long video on how your product works.

So by telling them before they click that it will only take 40 seconds of their time, you’re assuring them that you respect their time and won’t take a second more than you need.

6. Sales team goals

The purpose of this kind of sales pitch isn’t to embarrass the prospect if they aren’t meeting their goals; it’s to acknowledge that lower-than-expected sales are a pain point that you’re equipped to solve.

This is another example of the kind of pitch that you should only employ if your research has shown that this specific issue is one the prospect is struggling with.

7. Quick question on {{company}} {{first_name}}

If you’re marketing to other marketers, you can “speak their language” in a sales pitch. You can’t do this when you’re pitching to people outside your industry or your role.

But when you know your prospect will understand certain vocabulary words, concepts, and concerns, you can jump right to the jargon and talk to them marketer-to-marketer.

Doing this communicates that you’ve been in the same position they’re in now and that you’re offering them a solution that’s truly designed for somebody in their position.

8. Available for a chat?

Similar to example #3, this pitch invites the prospect to tell you about the pain points they’re experiencing, rather than you assuming them.

The difference here is that this pitch feels more casual and suggests a more person-to-person, rather than company-to-company, connection between you and the prospect. Use this kind of pitch for a smaller or sole proprietor prospect.

9. Let's build your A-team

Certain sales pitches are best suited for products. Others are best suited for services. This template is an example of the latter type of pitch because it does two things:

• It name-drops top players who’ve used the service, implicitly including the prospect in that list
• It includes data on the results the service has garnered for those past clients

Use this kind of sales pitch if you’ve got an impressive client list and the data to back up your claims.

10. Help with [[problem]]

This kind of pitch wastes no time introducing the sender. If you’re pitching to a cold prospect, this is the strategy to use.

There’s only one question the prospect should be asking when they reach the end of your email: how soon can we schedule the call?

11. Hi {{first_name}}, quick question

Just like the previous sales pitch template, this one starts by introducing the sender. It’s another great choice for a cold prospect.

This one gets more personal, though, first with an honest compliment about the prospect’s company and then a personal connection. If you have either of these, leverage them. That’s one of the most effective ways to personalize a sales pitch.

12. [[problem]] solution

Another way to leverage your brand’s resources is to have your testimonials sell your offer. That’s what this sales pitch does.

It gets straight to the point, telling the prospect that you know what they do and what they struggle with—this shows that you did your research, which goes a long way in establishing trust.

Then, after the pitch, the testimonial does the talking, followed by a promise that the prospect, too, can have this great experience.

13. {{company} + [[your company]]

This is another sales pitch template that hinges primarily on a question rather than going straight to the offer. The offer is subtle here: just a quick sentence about what you do, no pressure on the recipient to take you up on it at all.

This kind of pitch is ideal for offers that are best explained through a conversation rather than a one-way email.

14. Are you happy with [[competitor]]?

If it’s appropriate for your brand (and this kind of tactic isn’t appropriate for every brand—and that’s perfectly fine!), ask the prospect about their experience with a competitor directly.

This is where your research comes in handy—by taking the time to learn about what your prospect’s company does and the services they’re currently working with, you can get personal in your sales pitch like this.

Remember, you aren’t badmouthing your competitor in this kind of sales pitch. Instead, you’re asking the prospect for their honest feedback about their experience with the competitor, good and bad.

And when they mention the difficulties they’ve faced, that’s your opportunity to offer a solution.

Get the most out of your sales pitch

Writing effective sales pitches is part science, part art. There are the components that need to be there, like an irresistible hook and a direct call to action. But there are also the components that can vary a little, like the statistics you include to support your offer.

As you test and redevelop your sales pitch framework, remember that selling involves more than just an irresistible offer. That offer is only irresistible if it’s personalized for the people receiving it.

And even when it is irresistible, sometimes people still need a little nudge to say yes and move forward with the deal. That’s why you almost always need to send a follow-up email within a few days of sending your initial sales pitch.

Need more help crafting a sales pitch? Check out our database of sales pitch templates here .

Lindsay Kramer is a copywriter and content writer from the USA. She is a contributing author at Grammarly, 99Designs, and the Leaf Group. When she's not writing, she's out surfing.

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13 Powerful Sales Pitch Presentation Templates to Land Your Next Client

Written by: Orana Velarde

An effective sales process has seven cyclical steps; prospecting, preparation, approach, presentation, overcoming kickbacks, closing the sale, and following up.

Every step is as important as the next for landing a client or closing a deal.

But when crafting your sales pitch presentation, you need to make a solid case for your product or service.

Using storytelling, design and sales techniques , you can impact prospects and clients' minds. The slides will persuade them to get in touch or make a purchase by showing them product features, benefits and your value propositions.

Are you ready to land your next client? Today, we’ll look at step 4 in the sales process: the sales pitch presentation.

We’ve got sales pitch presentation examples, templates and tips to help you land deals quickly.

Let’s get started.

Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit sales pitch presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

Table of Contents

What is a sales pitch presentation, what should a sales pitch presentation include, 13 sales pitch presentation templates, sales pitch presentation tips to close deals quickly.

• A sales pitch presentation is essentially a sales pitch in presentation form. It’s not an elevator pitch or a cold-call scrip.
• The purpose of a sales pitch presentation is to sell. It’s used to bring you one step closer to closing a deal.
• Sales pitches and pitch decks resemble each other in terms of content, but they’re used differently. Sales pitches are for selling services or products. Pitch decks are for convincing investors to back your startup with funding.
• Visme offers an extensive library of sales pitch presentation templates . Each is professionally designed to meet your needs and industry standards. Instantly create branded templates with our AI-powered Brand Wizard and more.

A sales pitch presentation is essentially a sales pitch in presentation form. It’s not like an elevator pitch or a cold call script; it goes deeper than that.

The initial sales contact, be it a cold call or an email, goes straight to the point and is mainly about the prospect. That’s how you get their attention, letting them know you have a good grip on their pain points. When you get to the presentation, they’ve already heard from you several times, and it’s your opportunity to share more information like pricing, benefits, product features and use cases.

Yes, the principal purpose of a sales pitch presentation is to sell, but it’s not usually the last step toward closing a deal. You’ll likely need to follow up and keep the conversation going until you get a yes.

That said, your sales presentation needs to inspire, engage and make the prospect feel that they need what you are offering; otherwise, no amount of follow-ups will help.

If you're dealing with busy executives who won't sit through your presentation, try using a startup one-pager . It'll help you capture their interest faster and more efficiently.

Once they're hooked, you can arrange a meeting to present the entire pitch deck with all the juicy info and data to seal the deal.

Sales Deck vs. Pitch Deck

Occasionally, a sales pitch, otherwise known as a sales deck , is confused as being the same as a pitch deck.

Sales pitches and pitch decks not only sound similar, but they also resemble each other in terms of content.

As we mentioned above, sales pitches are for selling. On the other hand, pitch decks are for convincing investors to back your startup with funding. Yes, both involve exchanging monetary funds, but in different ways.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

Sales pitch presentations follow a standard format that most business people recognize. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with the content and the types of slides.

To structure a sales pitch presentation, start with these slides, some of which can be combined:

• A branded cover slide
• An introduction
• State the problem clients want to solve
• How are current solutions failing
• Suggestions for better solutions (don’t name your product or service yet)
• Your value proposition
• Presentation of your product or service
• What benefits does the client receive
• Examples, reviews and social proof
• Pricing and call to action

Here are other supplemental slides you might want to include:

• Message from the CEO and a bio
• An introduction to the team
• Explainer videos
• Comparisons

When creating your sales pitch presentation, don’t make it too long or else the viewer won’t swipe to the end. Aim for a number between 8 and 13. You can combine some of these slides as long as they are easy to understand and follow a sequence.

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In this section, we’ll showcase a wide range of essential sales pitch slides from various industries and services.

Each example of a sales pitch presentation comes with actionable tips you can use to polish your template to make it your own.

1. Simple Theme

The Visme Simple Theme is more than just a presentation template; it’s an all-in-one library of ready-to-use slides. They all follow the same aesthetic, making creating a sales pitch presentation easier. Don’t feel tied down by specific design compositions; choose from hundreds of options in the slide library.

And FYI, two other presentation themes are available if you want to try another style.

2. Consultancy Services

State your short and sweet elevator pitch opener on the first slide. This practice is reminiscent of what a landing page does, showing the viewer quickly what you’re about and how you can help. In this case, a consultancy service sales pitch deck starts with a bang.

Continue with a few introductory slides before explaining exactly how your company will fulfill the promise it offers on the opening slide. Finally, add relevant contact information so the prospect can get in touch with you and close the deal.

3. Business Presentation

This business presentation is perfect for your sales pitch presentation if you’re looking for a sales pitch slide that doesn’t have contextual content to fix or improve. All your content is ready to go, you just need to input it into a template. Use any or all of the infographic slides to showcase important data about your company.

Add the content about the client's pain points and your solutions in the introduction and company overview slides. Explain how each team member of your company will help you reach your business goals. This sales pitch deck template is perfect for a lively and creative business that offers services to small businesses and young companies looking to grow.

4. Marketing Strategy Services

This sales pitch template for a marketing agency is perfect for personalized communication with prospects.

The table of contents is straightforward and can be made interactive with hyperlinks to each section. Early in the deck, some slides lay out the prospect’s problem and how you plan to solve it.

A timeline slide gives more details about an ideal roadmap to reach the common goal, and the pricing section is self-explanatory. The “Get Started” buttons can lead to landing pages or booking platforms to schedule a call with the sales team. A testimonial slide brings it all home with social proof.

5. Promotion of Services

Not all sales pitch presentations need to look corporate or somber; take a look at this holistic-style slide deck for a creative business. White backgrounds and golden details transmit the brand values of a company that could be a content creator platform or modeling agency. The style is clean and inviting while also fresh and inspiring.

The What We Do, Services and Process slides are perfect for laying out how you’ll help a potential client achieve their own goals. Use the quote slide to add a special tidbit about what it means to work with you. The Mission & Values slides are perfect for clients looking to work with a business that shares ideals.

6. Tangerine Business Presentation

Your SaaS company needs a sales pitch presentation showing your personality and vitality. Color block slide designs are super easy to brand with your colors . The white backgrounds will combine with everything and make your sales pitch content stand out.

Share your SWOT analysis for honest communication and how your company has grown over time with a timeline slide. Show off your social proof in the User Reach slide and share the pricing plans on a slide with links to landing pages with more info or a booking site to get in touch with you.

7. Corporate Presentation

Who says creative and corporate can’t go hand in hand? Look at this template for a media and design agency offering its services to larger companies and enterprises.

The design is catered to appeal to high management and the C-Suite with just enough eye-catching slides to inspire further communication with the sales team.

The second slide will set the tone for the rest of the presentation. Alternatively, use your short elevator speech or personalize it for the client by adding their name. Add a short bio about the CEO and why he started the company; make sure to make it relatable!

8. Colorful Business Presentation

Grab and keep the prospect’s attention with this stand-out presentation design. Keep your content short and to the point about how your services will help clients reach their goals. This style of sales pitch deck is ideal for a serious business with a creative edge, like a coworking space or a talent recruiter.

Cut out team photos and use circle frames to match the style of slides in this presentation. Use device mockups to showcase portfolio work or special pages on your website and app. Share details that will entice the client to know more.

9. Comic Style Business Presentation

Young and lively Gen Z startups need sales pitch presentations too. This is one of the best sales pitch decks you'll find out in our library.

With this template, you won’t have to settle for serious and dull; make your slides fun instead. Show the client how your team will help them with creative roadblocks they can’t solve themselves. Transmit your business personality through the slide designs.

Create a powerful mission slide where you share what your company is all about. Being honest is the best way to reach the clients that will click with your team.

Businesses and professionals are looking to work with companies they can relate to and brands with which they have things in common. Reach the clients you deserve with a presentation that represents you.

10. SaaS Product - Easy Design App

Unique layouts grab attention. For example, this template stands out before you even see the content. This presentation style is perfect for a company that likes to stand out and be disruptive in its field. They’re not only selling a product or a service; they’re also selling a feeling.

Veering away from the corporate look and feel, this presentation works for digital editorial companies, social media agencies, freelance portals and other vibrant online entities. Add some background music to these slides to create a full experience.

11. Product - Coffee Machine

Sales pitch presentations for specific products are detail-oriented and full of reasons why the product is a great buy. This sales presentation for a multipurpose coffee machine takes you on a journey of existential coffee conundrums that the machine aims to solve with its many functions.

This template is a great example of how feelings and emotions sell more than images and content. The milk coffee color background throughout the slides sets the tone for the message and the product features.

12. Product - Portfolio App

When your potential clients and prospects are freelancers, you must tap into their major pain point: landing new job contracts.

How will your service or product help them? This presentation for a writing portfolio app is simple and to the point, getting a freelancer’s attention fast.

This sales pitch presentation example is not content-heavy but still imparts a message of dependability and ease of use. Use calm and subdued colors to share a feeling of trustworthiness and calm.

You want to make your freelance clients feel like they need you, and this sales pitch presentation does just that.

13. Product - Home Appliance

How do you sell a home appliance without falling into gender stereotyping? You concentrate on talking to a specific audience, in this case, people who don’t have time to cook for themselves after a long day. And how do you get their attention fast? By asking the right questions and doing so in vibrant, happy colors.

Sell your product easily with a sales pitch presentation that delivers your message without the fluff. Share data to support your claims and offer real life-changing solutions through empathy and excellent copywriting.

For a sales pitch presentation to be effective and help your team close the deal, it has to cover the basics and go beyond. We’ve put together some tips to help your sales pitch presentation be the best it can be in the present and future.

Let’s get started with some Do’s.

Sales Pitch Presentation Do’s

1. share the presentation as a digital experience.

Sales pitch presentations are more effective when they’re digital and interactive. A PDF sales presentation is fine, but why not create a digital experience? Presentations made with Visme offer so much more for both the sales rep and the prospect than many other tools.

When you create a digital experience sales pitch presentation, you can use all sorts of features that aren’t available in a static PDF. We’ve included several of those in the sections below.

When you’ve finished creating the branded, personalized, and interactive sales pitch presentation, send it to your prospects with a live link . Add password protection for extra security, and choose the option for the presentation not to be tracked by search engines.

2. Track The Views on Your Presentation

Sending sales pitch presentations without tracking their progress or views won’t help the sales process. When you are sure that a prospect has seen the presentation, you have a better chance of succeeding during follow-up. It’s not surprising that 50% of sales leaders say demos or sales presentations are one of the most important productivity metrics to track.

With Visme, you can track analytics for every presentation you send out, including sales pitch presentations. When you personalize each sales presentation and save it individually with the prospect's name, you’ll be able to track activity in more detail.

3. Personalize Your Sales Pitch Presentation Template

Sales pitch presentations don’t generally exist independently and are rarely sent out to just one prospect.

Your sales process is repeated with every new client, and in turn, each receives a sales pitch presentation after initial contact. In this case, automation is a time saver, but some level of personalization can improve the outcome.

Personalize sales pitch decks with the recipient’s name, position, company, and a specific pain point or solution, as well as references to the conversation you had with them previously. Of course, how much personalization you add will depend on your brand communication style.

The main goal is to close the gap before the buy-in, and personalization helps with that. Clients subconsciously appreciate personalized communication; it breaches the gap between prospects and loyal clients.

The technicality behind personalization starts with the sales pitch presentation template. As a brand, you can create a branded template as a base on which to add all general and personalized content. Once in the editor, Visme business plans include a dynamic fields feature , which helps your team input the same content on multiple slides with one edit.

4. Employ Interactive Features

When your sales team designs slide decks with Visme, they’ll be able to add interactive features like animations, videos, hyperlinks and popups. First, create an interactive table of contents linking each item to its corresponding slide. Don’t forget to add a back-to-home button on every other slide!

Another feature your team can take advantage of is pop-ups with supplemental information to create an interesting reading experience. Add explainer videos about your product and use animated icons, illustrations and slide transitions.

5. Add a Voice Over or Embedded Video of Yourself Presenting

Earlier, we mentioned the option of personalizing sales pitch presentations with dynamic fields. But there are more ways to make your presentations even more personal. With Visme, any sales rep in the dedicated workspace can add a personalized voice-over or use Presenter Studio to record themselves presenting a sales pitch to the prospect.

6. Always Follow Up

Not exactly a design or content tip, but an important one all the same. Never send a sales pitch presentation to a prospect without following up.

When you follow up, send them the live link or attachment again, just in case they didn’t see it the first time. Not following up after sending a sales presentation is a lost opportunity to keep a conversation that could potentially lead to a sale going.

The conversation after the presentation is usually about overcoming kickbacks and objections. This is the opportunity to clear doubts and reassure the prospect that your product or service is the solution they need for their pain point.

7. Do Some A/B Testing and Iterate

Finally, if your team sends out numerous sales pitch presentations—automated or personalized—conduct A/B testing to see what works better. One obvious choice would be to test automated presentations versus personalized ones. Others include the length of the presentation, whether it's PDF or interactive, whether it uses Presenter Studio or not, etc. Use Visme’s integrated tracking features along with your team’s analytics to come to conclusions and iterate new presentations.

Sales Pitch Presentation Don't’s

1. don’t make the presentation too long or complicated.

Avoid adding too many slides or making the sales presentation too complicated. You want the deck to convince the buyer to close the deal or be more interested, not scare them away with heavy content and confusing visual compositions.

2. Don’t send the presentation without an intro email or cold call first

Don’t rely on a sales pitch presentation as the only point of communication with a prospect. Use it as part of a repeatable sales process where the presentation comes after initial contact. Depending on your sales process, this can be an intro email or a cold call. It can be both if either one goes unanswered first.

After you’ve gotten their attention, kindly inform the contact that you’ll send over something they want to see. Confirm their email address and send them the sales pitch. Sending a presentation without an introduction first is a waste of time for your team.

Create Branded Sales Pitch Presentations With Visme

There you have it: we've shared templates and examples of sales presentations to get you started.

Now, it’s your turn to create a sales pitch presentation for your business. Hopefully, one of the templates in the collection above has inspired you to put together your next best slide deck.

When using Visme as a presentation maker, your sales team has all the tools on hand to create interactive, engaging and effective sales pitch presentations. The best part of all is that they can do so collaboratively.

Do you need to brainstorm first? Use the Visme whiteboard feature to lay out ideas with the team and draft out a structure to work with.

Have you used Visme to create branded material yet? Try the Brand Wizard to generate a large selection of templates for all your business needs. We promise that none of your visual graphics will ever be boring again.

Easily craft compelling sales pitch presentations using Visme

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About the Author

Orana is a multi-faceted creative. She is a content writer, artist, and designer. She travels the world with her family and is currently in Istanbul. Find out more about her work at oranavelarde.com

The Perfect Sales Pitch: Examples, Templates, and Best Practices

Overfamiliar, aggressive, awkward — we’ve all been on the receiving end of a terrible sales pitch from a pushy seller.

But sales pitches are so much more than an uncomfortable phone call or an unwarranted email. In fact, a great pitch should make a buyer’s life better by connecting them with products and solutions that solve their most urgent problems.

How can you maximize the potential of your sales pitch? In this guide, we’ll reveal the secrets to ensuring your outreach is pitch-perfect by answering common questions like:

• What is a sales pitch?
• How do you make a sales pitch?
• What needs to be included in a sales pitch?
• What makes a sales pitch bad?
• How to deliver a sales pitch
• Templates for sales pitches that capture attention

Let’s dive in.

WHAT IS A SALES PITCH ?

A sales pitch is a well-crafted sales presentation that connects salespeople with potential buyers. The goal of a sales pitch is to catch a potential customer’s attention and convince them to learn more. Pitches can happen anywhere — via email, social media, or in person. A great sales pitch should pique the buyer’s curiosity and convey clear value.

For more on how to craft the best sales pitch, see what our team of sales experts has to say in the video below

HOW DO YOU MAKE A SUCCESSFUL SALES PITCH?

Creating an effective sales pitch is simple — just follow these five steps.

1. Research, research, and research some more

Great research will help build a foundation of value for your pitch, increasing the likelihood that your buyer will respond. Try to understand to whom you are pitching. What does their company do? What goals might that company have? What buyer persona are they most likely to fit in? Additionally, don’t forget to explore the customer’s story and profile — find out who they are, what their role is, and if you have any shared interests that might help you set the tone for the rest of the customer relationship.

2. Frame it around the customer’s needs , not yours

Talking about your product is the fastest way to get buyers to tune out. A winning sales pitch is about the customer, not you. Think about the functionality of your product and the value it provides for your potential clients. Are you reducing costs? Improving efficiency? Eliminating manual tasks? Buyers will respond more to the benefits of your product pitch than anything else.

3. Choose the right channel

There are many venues through which a sales pitch can be delivered — email, social media, or a phone call. Think about both the customer’s needs and their industry. Think about both the buyer and their industry. Mature, more established industries may respond better to more traditional forms of outreach, like a sales call. On the other hand, a highly innovative or startup company may prefer modern approaches, like a direct message through social media. That said, don’t stress over this stage too much; if you don’t get a response from one channel, it’s totally acceptable to try again via another one.

4. Make it personal

Next, think about personalization. Most reps use automation tools or work off a base pitch template, but that template should change based on how you are delivering your pitch and who it’s going to. For instance, you’d use different language based on whether you’re pitching a prospect via social media than you would through a sales email. You’ll also want to tailor your pitch so that the value and benefits you’re describing map to actual buyer pain points — after all, someone in healthcare will have very different needs than someone in manufacturing.

5. Tell the buyer what you want them to do

Finally, always end with a call to action. What do you want the buyer to do? Call you back or respond with times to meet? It’s critical that you close with a clear next step, so stay away from vague phrases like “What do you think?” Go for strong, timely, actionable phrases instead — check out the examples in the next section for more inspiration.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE INCLUDED IN A SALES PITCH ?

Now that you know how to make a sales pitch, let’s take a closer look at what the pitch itself should say. Regardless of channel, there are three main components to every successful pitch.

Whether it’s the opening line of your cold call or the subject line of your cold email, your hook should capture your buyer’s attention. Great ideas for openings include:

• Asking a question (“How would you like to increase revenue…”)
• Share a data point (“Did you know that 60% of CEOs…”)
• Reference a shared connection (“Saw that you were also a fan of…”)
• Cut to the chase (“I won’t waste your time — just wanted to share…”)
• Mention a recent interaction (“It was great connecting with you at…”)

After your hook, you should quickly explain why you are contacting your buyer and what your product can do for them. Keep this value prop short but enticing. Some key points to hit on include:

• What your product is in plain English — now is not the time for marketing jargon.
• Why the buyer should continue to engage with you using data, case studies, testimonials, or market research.
• How will the buyer personally benefit should they respond? Do this by typing the benefits from the previous bullet to the buyer’s goals or objectives.

Call to Action

Finally, close your call, social, or email pitch out with a call to action, or CTA. Push to include a clear next step your buyer can take, like calling you back or responding with availability. Take a look at these examples:

• When is a good time to chat about this more?
• Would you be open to a call to hear more?
• What is the best way to connect on this?
• Do you have any availability next Tuesday for a quick call?
• How would 15 minutes next week sound?
• Does it make sense to connect for 10 minutes this week?

WHAT MAKES A SALES PITCH BAD?

There are some sales pitch techniques you should avoid at all costs. Before you send your pitch or dial your customer, skim your pitch for any of these red flags:

• “I” statements: Your sales pitch has limited real estate. Don’t waste it on talking about yourself.
• Long pitches: The term “elevator pitch” should be taken literally. You shouldn’t take an hour to deliver your value proposition. A good sales pitch should be delivered in the time it takes a person to go from the lobby to the second floor.
• Product pricing: Getting a buyer to speak about their wallets, or money in general, on the first interaction is a fast way to have them ignore you because you don’t sound interested in them or their journey.
• Complicated explanations of product features or capabilities: During the prospecting stage, buyers aren’t ready to discuss solution details or look through an entire pitch deck.
• Overfamiliar greetings like “How was your weekend?”: Unless you’ve met the prospect before, this will come off as creepy.
• Generic pitches: If this pitch could work for any prospect, then it’s probably not tailored enough to capture a prospect’s attention.
• Promises you can’t keep: It may be tempting to promise buyers the moon, but this approach will ultimately set them up for disappointment; be realistic and let the strength of your product speak for itself.

HOW TO DELIVER A SALES PITCH

Any inside sales rep will tell you that pitching is hard. No matter which channel you work through, engaging with customers is a nerve-wracking experience. But it’s not impossible.

The key to delivering a flawless pitch is to stay confident. And the way to build confidence is through preparation. Here’s how:

• Practice your pitch live before you deliver it . While it may seem silly to recite a pitch to your roommate (or your pet), live practice is one of the most effective ways to work out the kinks in your delivery so you’re fully comfortable speaking in front of prospective clients, even if you’re pitching through a digital channel. — so it’s best to start honing your live pitch delivery skills sooner rather than later.
• Keep buyer profiles on hand. In general, most pitches will be done remotely via phone calls, social media outreach, or email. Take advantage of the fact that your buyer isn’t in the room by keeping your account reach on hand during interactions. Think of these notes as a security blanket. Sure, you could deliver the pitch without them, but in the event that your nerves get the best of you, you can recover quickly and discreetly.
• Know what your next step is. Don’t get caught flat-footed when a customer says “yes” to your pitch. Especially for live interactions, it’s important to know what your next step looks like. In some cases, this may be as simple as asking a buyer for time to set up a demo. But buyers may want to talk shop while they have you — so be prepared to dive deeper. It can help to keep a sales play or discovery call deck on hand to guide you through a more in-depth conversation, should the need arise.

TEMPLATES FOR SALES PITCHES THAT CAPTURE CUSTOMER ATTENTION

There’s no one right away to craft a sales pitch. That said, these sales pitch examples can help your sales team get started — just don’t forget to personalize using the strategies we discussed earlier for the best conversion rates.

1. The Shared Connection

This approach is useful when you and your buyer have something in common outside of work, like a shared hobby or alma mater.

Hi <<>>,

Reaching out as we’re connected on LinkedIn, I found your recent post about the best restaurants in Seattle super handy. Your suggestion to “eat outside our comfort zones” was a great reminder to be more adventurous in my dinner choices.

And in the spirit of trying new things, I wanted to share our latest research with you. I would love to connect to walk you through the report and get a sense of your near-term goals.

Would you be open to this?

2. The Data Dump

Data is a great way to catch buyer attention, especially if it can help them make the case to their team for your product.

The bad news: marketing burn is all too real these days. The good news? Help is on the way. New research shows that our platform can deliver:

• 72% increase in buyer engagement
• 50% in open-rates
• 20% decrease in attrition

How does 15 minutes next week sound to walk through how our customers achieved these numbers with our platform?

3. The Celebratory Moment

Eventually, one of your pitches will coincide with a big moment in a buyer’s life. As long as it’s appropriate, leverage that moment to build a connection.

Congrats on the recent promotion to Senior Program Manager! As you settle into your new role, curious to see how you’re approaching project management?

Did you know that a simple reduction of two manual tasks can win you back five hours a week?

Our platform makes it easier than ever for you to focus on the work that matters. If it makes sense, I would love to connect more on what we could do for you to make your day more efficient.

Do you have time next week?

4. The Incentive Follow-Up

Finally, this is a great template to use when leads are tepid or unresponsive — especially when paired with a personalized message.

With the weather cooling down, wanted to see if you’d be interested in a virtual coffee? Again, I would love to connect on our solution and fill you in on the use cases your peers are currently using our platform to solve. If not, enjoy a coffee on me!

PITCH-PERFECT CUSTOMER OUTREACH

Sales pitches don’t have to be an awkward experience. With these sales pitch ideas and techniques, you should be able to craft a sales pitch that strikes all the right chords with your target audience, ensuring your outreach is pitch-perfect and gets your buyers to the next step of the sales process every time.

Ready to put your pitching skills into action? Explore how Highspot makes engaging customers easier and more effective than ever .

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23 Elevator Pitch Examples to Inspire Your Own [+Templates & Expert Tips]

Published: May 06, 2024

Whether you're introducing yourself at a networking event, telling new colleagues about your business, or pitching to another professional — you want to capture attention and get it fast. In situations like these, you need a short and easy-to-grasp explanation of your company and its products, like an elevator pitch.

In this post, we'll discuss what an elevator pitch is, review some helpful examples, see some elevator pitch templates you can reference, go over some elevator pitch best practices, and cover some key mistakes you need to avoid when delivering one of these speeches.

Let's dive in.

Table of Contents

What is an elevator pitch?

Elevator speech example, how to write an elevator pitch, elevator pitch templates, 30-second elevator pitch examples, elevator pitches from real sales leaders, elevator speech best practices, what not to do in an elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch — also known as an elevator speech — is a short, memorable description of what you do and/or what you sell. The goal is to earn a second conversation, not to convince the person you're talking to that they should hire you or buy your solution.

An elevator pitch is never an opportunity to close a deal. It‘s an opportunity to close more of your prospect’s attention and time. It's a quick introduction to you, your company, and how you can help your prospect.

Hi, I‘m an account manager with Vacation Locator. We help travelers across the world plan their perfect holiday based on their interests, budget, and location preferences. With travel experts assigned to each account, we find the best deals and most unique experiences for each client, so they can enjoy their vacation, instead of stressing out about planning it. On average, we’re able to save travelers up to 30% on expenses such as hotel and airfare.

When to use an elevator pitch?

You can pull your elevator pitch out at functions like networking events or conferences, over interactions like warm calls, and even in job interviews or at career fairs. Keep your elevator pitch goal-oriented — for instance, "I help companies like yours increase production by up to 30% without additional cost . " — and always end with a business card or request to connect on LinkedIn.

If you‘re curious about what an elevator pitch should look like, or simply ready to jumpstart the pitch creation process, download the templates below. We’ve compiled several types of templates — from sales pitches to funding requests.

No matter which type of pitch you‘re delivering, keeping things concise is key. You don’t want to waste your prospect‘s, investor’s, or fellow professional‘s time. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how much time should you spend on an elevator pitch?

Download Now: Free Elevator Pitch Templates

E-pitch templates to better sell your product, fund your business, or network.

• 4 Fundraising Pitch Templates
• 2 Networking Pitch Templates
• 2 Sales Pitch Templates

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How long should an elevator pitch be?

An effective elevator pitch is meant to be no more than 30 seconds, just like the length of time you ride in an elevator. You want to keep your words easily digestible, so avoid trying to get too deep into specifics as it can drag on the conversation — and lose your prospect's attention.

You should have an effective elevator pitch prepared before you need it since you have such a short window to deliver it. Your pitch needs purpose, flow, and a hook to reel in attention if you want to get the kind of mileage you need out of it in 30-ish seconds.

Let's take a closer look at how to put one of these pitches together.

1. Use elevator pitch templates .

Download Free E-Pitch Templates

Use these templates to help structure pitches for three key audiences: prospects, investors, and potential network connection — making the elevator pitch creation process easier, freeing you up to focus on selling, crushing quota, and living your best life.

Let's dive into the ins and outs of fleshing out an elevator pitch of your own.

2. Introduce yourself.

The value of a personal introduction in an elevator pitch is multifaceted. For one, it gives your prospect some pretty mission-critical context — you won‘t get too much mileage out of an elevator pitch if they have no idea who you are or who you’re with.

Second, it can make the whole experience a bit more approachable. You don't want things to be too rigid or imposing when you pitch — a friendly introduction helps set the stage for a more natural engagement.

Bear in mind — you need to know what your prospect needs to know . What I mean is that you have to be mindful of how much information you‘re sharing as part of your introduction. You don’t want to get lost, ramble, and share more information than your prospect needs to know. Get it?

Effective elevator pitches are delivered in a tight window — you don‘t want to waste time rattling off details like how long you’ve worked at your company, what job you had before, or how much you like working for your employer.

Stick to the essentials, be friendly, and get on with the pitch.

3. State your company's mission.

Want me to let you in on some next-level, mind-blowing insight? Ready? Here we go — you need to know what your business does if you're going to pitch it effectively. Revolutionary stuff, right?

Seriously though, you want to include some insight about your business — and a lot of the time, that means briefly speaking to its mission and goals. Including a section where you give a thoughtfully tailored reference to your company identity can give a prospect valuable context and develop a little trust on a dime.

You don‘t have to give a comprehensive rundown of every project you’re working on or fondly reminisce about the team retreat where you picked up trash on the local beach. It can be as simple as something like, “I'm a sales rep at Better Than the Rest Cable. We help hotels across the U.S. pair with the perfect cable provider and plan for their region and needs.”

That description is both succinct and sufficient. It covers the necessary bases without getting too deep into the weeds. If you were to be cut off after these two sentences, the prospect would still know exactly who you are and what your company does. You know — the stuff your prospect needs to know.

4. Explain the company value proposition.

This might be the most important base to cover. A prospect isn‘t going to be interested in a solution that they can’t see the value in, so naturally, you need to be able to articulate a compelling value proposition in your pitch.

Unless you're at the forefront of some sort of technological revolution, your product or service exists in a competitive landscape — so your prospect is bound to have some options. Why should they choose you?

You need to provide a sentence or two that covers why your product or service is worth it — why your current customers are so happy with you. Here's what that could look like:

“I'm a sales rep at Better Than the Rest Cable. We help hotels across the U.S. pair with the perfect cable provider and plan for their region and needs. With regional experts assigned to each account, we help hotels identify the most cost-effective and guest-delighting cable plan for them.”

In one sentence, you‘ve told the prospect what sets you apart and how you can bring them value. You’ve likely piqued their interest, but how can you really grab their attention? Keep reading.

5. Grab their attention with a hook.

You‘ve spent the pitch up to this point lining them up, now knock them down. Give them the bit that’s going to prompt that second conversation — hit them with the hook.

That can come in the form of an enthralling story about a customer, some exhilarating information about your company's founders, a fascinating statistic about your offering, or something else that's neat and engaging to round things out and keep them interested.

Let‘s finish up the pitch we’ve been running with with an attention-grabbing statistic.

“I‘m a sales rep at Better Than the Rest Cable. We help hotels across the U.S. pair with the perfect cable provider and plan for their region and needs. With regional experts assigned to each account, we help hotels identify the most cost-effective and guest-delighting cable plan for them. On average, we’re able to save hotels up to 25% on their annual cable bills.”

6. Make sure your pitch is more conversational and less “sales-y.”

According to Patrick Beltran , Marketing Director at Ardoz Digital , you want to "[a]void sounding too sales-y. In my experience, people often shy away from elevator pitches that feel like a typical sales pitch. Your elevator pitch should come across more like a casual chat than a sales pitch. The aim is to spark interest, making the listener curious to learn more, not to seal the deal immediately.

"To make your pitch sound conversational, use a relaxed tone and steer clear of jargon. For instance, rather than saying ‘We offer cutting-edge solutions,’ say ‘We provide innovative solutions.’

"And instead of aggressively promoting our brand, we suggest ‘We’re looking to work with companies to address some of their marketing challenges. Perhaps you’d be interested in exploring this opportunity?’ "

7. Keep it simple and focused.

Gauri Manglik , CEO and Cofounder of Instrumentl , says, "The most important tip I can offer for creating and delivering an effective elevator pitch is to keep it simple and focused. Have one clear message or key insight you want to convey and structure your pitch around that.

For example, if you have a new product, focus on articulating the core problem it solves and how it uniquely solves that problem. Say something like, ‘We’ve developed a new tool that helps sales teams reduce the time spent on administrative tasks by over 50% each week. By streamlining CRM data entry and reporting processes through an intuitive mobile interface, account managers can spend less time pushing paper and more time building key relationships.’

A simple, focused message like this, with one relevant example or proof point to bring it to life, is all you need for an initial elevator pitch. Resist the urge to cram in too many details or try to explain everything your business or product does.

You have 30 seconds; one clear message is enough to spark interest for follow-up. With practice, a simple pitch can become a compelling story that fuels a meaningful first conversation. Keep it short — make it count."

8. Read and edit the pitch.

Once you have everything written out, read it aloud to make sure it sounds natural. Overly rigid, borderline-robotic pitches are rarely compelling. If it seems too stiff and formal, go back to the drawing board — at least a little.

Ideally, this pitch will be a prelude to a professional conversation — so striking a balance between professional and conversational with your pitch is in your best interest.

Now that you know how to write an elevator pitch, download HubSpot's eight free elevator pitch templates to put your learnings into action. These templates can be used to make a sale, start networking, or jumpstart a deal for business capital.

Featured Resource: 8 Free Elevator Pitch Templates

Our templates follow established best practices for elevator pitches. Each one includes:

• A personal greeting: Start every pitch by establishing a human connection and making your prospect feel seen and heard.
• A statement of your company's mission: Your mission can be blended with your value proposition and vice versa. But this piece of information is essential to get your prospect's buy-in, quickly.
• A hook to get your audience's attention: The hook can be as simple as a probing question or a highly personalized statement that‘s been tailored to your prospect’s needs. Either way, the hook will often seal the deal.
• A real example: See the template in action by reading a filled-out example, allowing you to visualize what your pitch may look like as you refine and edit it.

Using these templates allows you to save precious time and focus on the essence of the pitch instead of minute details, such as how to start it off or how to organize it. Your prospect's time is valuable, and so is yours.

If you're looking for some inspiration, look no further. The following elevator pitch examples illustrate different ways to describe what you can offer in 30 seconds or less.

1. An Attention-Grabbing Question

And like the previous one, it speaks to a “common but specific” pain point for the prospect on the other side of the pitch, covering an issue that many (if not most) marketers deal with consistently — and the “look at how many of your peers I talk to every month” element supports that.

And finally, it ends with an accessible but vivid metaphor about how efficient the resource is. I‘ll go out on a limb and assume that most prospects have poured a cup of coffee in their lives. It’s a frame of reference that's equal parts relatable and engaging — in short, it works.

3. The Surprise Ending

You want to know how many leads from your webinar campaign became customers versus leads from your trade show booth. But only customers who bought two products — and weren't already in your database.

How long would it take you to create that report?

If you had AnswerASAP, a data and reporting tool, you'd already know. It creates reports in a matter of seconds.

Holy heck! My goodness! What a twist! Bet you didn't see that ending coming — and neither will your prospects!

Okay, that might be overkill, but still, this kind of pitch works — for a few reasons. For one, it starts with a relatable approach. It runs through a “common but specific” scenario that businesses in the prospect‘s industry likely deal with. That shows that you’re familiar with a prospect's space, giving you some instant credibility.

From there, it offers an engaging, cheeky way to plug your solution. You raise a pressing pain point and immediately position your offering as the best way to solve it. It's slick, creative, and fun — taken together, those elements give you some serious staying power.

4. An Outlandish Stat

Dan Ponomarenko , CEO of Webvizio , offered this pitch:

“At Webvizio, we streamline web project management for digital teams, making collaboration seamless. Our platform allows you to visualize changes, communicate in real time, and manage feedback efficiently — all in one place. We eliminate the clutter of back-and-forth emails, so you can focus on what you love: creating. Interested in simplifying your project processes and enhancing team productivity?”

2. "Deliver a clear tech talent solution with EchoGlobal Tech . "

Lou Reverchuk , Co-Founder and CEO of EchoGlobal Tech , offered this pitch:

“Hello, I‘m Lou, representing EchoGlobal Tech, where we bridge the gap between innovative tech projects and top remote software developers. At EchoGlobal, we understand that the right talent makes all the difference. That’s why we guarantee no AI matchmaking and no juniors pretending to be senior devs. Always quality over quantity with us. Imagine having a dedicated expert who truly understands your project‘s vision and transforms it into reality. Let’s set up a time to discuss your hiring needs.”

3. "Simplify the insurance buying experience with Dundas Life "

Gregory Rozdeba , CEO of Dundas Life , offered this pitch:

“Imagine buying life insurance the way you shop online — quick, easy, and transparent. At Dundas Life, we streamline the complex process of finding the right insurance, making it accessible at your fingertips. With us, you‘re not just a policy number; you’re in control, informed, and secure. Let’s make insurance straightforward together.”

4. "Engage with real estate investment expertise with EZ Sell Homebuyers. "

Mike Wall , CEO of EZ Sell Homebuyers , offered this pitch:

“Looking to maximize your real estate investment? With over two decades of experience and a portfolio of over 30 properties, I provide tailored advice that turns real estate into real results. Let’s discuss how I can help you achieve your property investment goals today.”

5. "Enhance your online visibility with CodeDesign . "

Bruno Gavino , Founder and CEO of CodeDesign , offered this pitch:

“Hi, I’m Bruno from CodeDesign. We often see companies struggle to gain visibility in the digital space, losing potential revenue to competitors who dominate online. Our agency specializes in leveraging advanced data analytics and custom digital strategies to enhance your online presence, driving more traffic and increasing sales. Imagine what it would be like to see your business outperform competitors by simply optimizing your digital marketing. Let’s chat about how we can make that happen for you.”

6. "Illuminate spaces with quality lighting with Festoon House . "

Matt Little , Director at Festoon House , offered this pitch:

“Imagine transforming your space with lighting that‘s not only beautiful but also built to last. At Festoon House, we’re dedicated to crafting premium lighting solutions that elevate your style, enhance your ambiance, and stand the test of time. From modern chandeliers to industrial-chic fixtures, our products are designed to inspire and impress. Join the Festoon House family and let's brighten up your world together — one light at a time!”

7. "Solve food waste with RedBat.Agency . "

Gert Kulla , CEO of RedBat.Agency , offered this pitch:

“We're tackling the issue of food waste in restaurants. Our app allows diners to buy surplus food at a discount while helping venues reduce waste and generate extra revenue. This creates a win-win for businesses and customers looking to save money and curb food waste.”

8. "Elevate travel with JetLevel Aviation . "

Fahd Khan , Director of Marketing and Technology at JetLevel Aviation , offered this pitch:

“At JetLevel Aviation, we provide top-tier private jet charter services, ensuring fast, flexible, and seamless travel for high-profile clients. Unlike traditional charter companies, our bespoke solutions and access to a wide range of luxury jets guarantee that your travel experience is not just efficient but also tailored to your specific preferences and schedules. Let us elevate your travel experience to the next level.”

1. Keep it brief.

The purpose of an elevator speech is to be as brief as possible while capturing a prospect‘s attention. Try to stay under 60 seconds — including your introduction. Even if you’re delivering your elevator speech during a formal presentation, where you have time to elaborate if needed, keep the bulk of your pitch under sixty seconds.

If you don‘t, you won’t be able to use your pitch when you're chatting with prospects in situations with tighter time constraints — such as a tradeshow or a chance meeting.

2. Practice multiple times beforehand.

You may have written the most incredible elevator speech for your product, but if you hamper the delivery by misremembering or even forgetting parts of your pitch, it won't be an effective tool. Be sure to practice by yourself, with your manager, and with your colleagues.

The goal isn't just to memorize it, but to practice your tone, pace, and overall delivery.

3. Come prepared with additional materials.

When you‘re delivering your elevator pitch, be prepared to provide your prospect with what they need to continue the conversation. Whether that’s a business card, a brochure, or a short demo, carry all that you might need with you.

The elevator speech is your opportunity to begin a deal on the right foot and speed up the nurturing process. Typically, you might take weeks emailing a prospect before they're ready to schedule a meeting with you, but an elevator pitch speeds that work. You want to have the materials you need to keep the conversation going.

4. Be positive and enthusiastic.

It‘s essential to show your personality during your elevator pitch, but whether you’re a quiet, calm introvert or a charming, excitable extrovert, you should still convey positivity and enthusiasm.

You can use your body language and expression to keep things positive, even if your tone is quiet and calm. You might highlight the amazing benefits your prospect will enjoy if they sign up, or tell a positive story from one of your previous clients.

Most importantly, you should make it obvious that you want to help your prospect more than anything — which will make you sound positive by default.

5. Vary the tone of your voice.

As you deliver your pitch, vary your tone and modulation to keep your listener engaged. This will help you emphasize the most important parts of your speech — such as the benefits — while keeping your prospect‘s attention. The pitch may be short, but you’ll be surprised at how easily people can tune out based on your tone alone. We don‘t want to risk it! Especially if it’s a prospect you've never spoken with.

1. Don't ramble.

I‘ve been a rep at Sales-R-Us for five years now. They’re the best company I‘ve ever worked for. I’ve loved my time there. I started as a BDR and have worked my way up to a senior position. I‘ve never looked back. I also love the services we sell. I can’t wait to tell you about them. Sales-R-Us help companies become more efficient with their sales through training, evaluation, and leadership management — and that‘s just to name a few. We have a unique approach that’s been honed by lots of sales experts over the years, and I‘ve seen our solution really help a lot of companies and teams. I’ve had many clients whose businesses have been saved because of our genius solution. I know we can do the same for you. Would you be interested in learning more?

This elevator pitch is not effective because:

• It's way too long.
• The rep spends way too much time talking about themself.
• It never gets specific or actionable.
• It never provides actual examples or attention-grabbing facts.

2. Don't use too much jargon.

At Stratosphere Solutions, our OS-level virtualization delivers software in containers, all of which share the system of a lone operating system kernel. These containers are isolated but can communicate with one another through well-defined channels. Ultimately, this lets you use fewer resources than traditional virtual machines.

• It's inaccessible to someone without relevant technical knowledge.
• It features too much jargon.
• It tries to condense an extremely complicated topic into 30 seconds.
• Its value proposition isn't clear-cut.

3. Don‘t insert your prospect’s personal information.

I visited your Instagram and noticed that you have a pitbull. I have a pitbull, too! I bet he sometimes distracts you when you work from home, which is the absolute pits when you‘re trying to put together a report for your boss. Your dog — what’s his name? — may be asking for your attention, but I assure you you can still create a report as easy as 1-2-3 with AnswerASAP. While petting your pupperino.

• It sacrifices the hook in favor of creating a “personal connection.”
• It's too familiar with the prospect to the point of discomfort.
• It makes assumptions about the prospect's work-from-home tendencies.
• It uses informal slang (“the absolute pits,” “pupperino”) for unnecessary humor.

4. Don‘t under-emphasize the problem you’re solving.

It's possible that you may run into issues when putting reports together for your boss. For instance, things may go awry every once in a while, such as disappearing data or disagreeing sources. With AnswerASAP, you can lay those worries to rest. We have a few features that will help you with those issues if you ever run into them.

• It treats a customer problem as a possibility and not an urgent reality.
• It‘s vague (“things may go awry”) and doesn’t emphasize how those issues can hurt the prospect.
• It doesn‘t specify the product features that will solve the prospect’s challenges.
• Because it never goes into detail, it shows little research and care.

Remember, an elevator pitch should only come at someone else‘s prompting. If you’re spontaneously reciting it to random people, you're not doing yourself any favors. But if they ask, you want to be prepared with an interesting, well-crafted pitch.

Reel in Clients with an Effective Elevator Pitch

While a short speech may seem insignificant, those first conversations can hold some weight. With a well-crafted pitch, you can turn a single conversation with a prospect into a long-lasting customer, or even into a business partner. We hope you found these examples helpful and are inspired to craft your own effective elevator pitch.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Sales - 8 min READ

6 sales pitch examples (and why they work)

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Copper Staff

Contributors from members of the Copper team

Not only do you have to actively sell your product or service to the person you're talking to within minutes, but you'll also need to connect with them. Y'know, on a human level.

• Elevator pitch example

But closing a deal isn’t as easy as just building rapport (with both prospects and existing customers ). You’ll need to use powerful action words, yet be cautious about how you come across.

Too salesy? It’ll put off your audience.

Too informal? Your prospects won’t feel the urgency to buy.

There’s a fine balance between being overly promotional and being too friendly with your prospects. Either could banish any chance of your prospects thinking, “Wow! I need to buy this today.”

Take a look at these six effective sales pitch examples for some tips on how to walk that line:

• Phone call sales pitch example
• Email sales pitch example
• Voicemail sales pitch example
• Presentation sales pitch example
• Follow-up sales pitch example

1. Phone call sales pitch example

Selling products or services over the phone is one of the most popular forms of pitching to a potential client, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's the easiest.

This sales pitch is typically delivered when cold-calling your prospects. Since these people haven’t heard of your brand before, it can be tricky to grab their attention and build trust over the phone.

The success of your phone call sales pitch depends on your sales script . If you’re boring your potential customer with a long intro about your company, there’s a high chance they’ll simply hang up.

(Plus, with eight attempts to reach a cold call now considered average , you’ll want to keep prospects on the phone if they answer it.)

Lucky for you, this phone call sales pitch example can help grab your prospect’s attention instantly— and pique their interest about what you’re selling:

Salesperson : Hey Naomi. It’s Ian from Acme Company. How are you?

Prospect : I’m okay. What can I do for you Ian?

Salesperson: I noticed a number of your ads on Facebook and Twitter promoting X product, and felt you could really boost your conversions by making just a few small changes.

Prospect : Sorry, what do you guys do?

Salesperson : We work with eCommerce companies like Harry’s to manage their social media ad campaigns. In fact, after only one month of working with Harry’s, for every $1,000 they spend now, they get a 30% increase in conversions.

Prospect : [thinking]

Salesperson : I’d love to learn more about your ad campaigns, Naomi, and share ideas that've worked really well for us. Can we find a 15-minute window next week for a brief call?”

But what makes it so good?

Let’s look at the opening line.

Instead of opening with a generic “Have you got a few minutes to chat about our product?” the salesperson begins with a conversation to make sure the prospect is in the right frame of mind by asking how they are.

Not only does this avoid sounding too salesy, it also sets the tone for the entire conversation.

Then the salesperson explains how they met the person they’re calling: through their social media ads.

(Privacy concerns are big. Anticipating this and getting it out in the open can clear any “Sorry, how did you get my contact details?” questions that could restrict your flow of conversation.)

Once the salesperson has explained this, they have a quick back-and-forth about basic product details and how the service they’re selling could be beneficial.

Instead of waffling on (and potentially boring the prospect), they close the conversation by requesting a follow-up call within the next week. This works because:

• The prospect has time to set aside mental space to chat about the service being sold, rather than being caught off-guard.
• The salesperson can prepare for their call and do some research to further personalize the pitch.
• When they’ve had time to prepare, the prospect can digest information properly rather than listening to the salesperson talk.

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2. email sales pitch example.

Email sales pitches are delivered similarly to cold calls. The only difference? It’s sent via email rather than over the phone.

Although email pitches eliminate common problems that phone call pitches have, they still don’t guarantee results.

Why? The average person receives around 121 emails per day .

With so many messages hitting inboxes, you need to do something special to stand out and engage your prospect.

This email from Demandwell is an excellent sales pitch email example.

But why does it work so well?

Simply put, it’s digestible. Instead of sending a 1,000-word essay about the service she’s selling, Summer describes it in two short lines (the first two lines).

She gets right to the point, clearly explaining what her product does and the value it offers.

Summer also uses visuals in her cold pitch. The screenshot gives the recipient a glimpse into the product and its UI.

But our favorite part is the offer of lunch or coffee, on her. Who said that free coffee wasn’t an effective way for sales teams to make more sales?

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3. Voicemail sales pitch example

Unfortunately, many sales reps spend the majority of their cold call time leaving voicemails.

(That could happen if you’re attempting to contact prospects at inconvenient times.)

But whether you’re calling at the wrong time or being ignored because you’re hiding your caller ID, you need an awesome voicemail sales pitch if you want to hear back from your prospective client.

Here's a voicemail sales pitch example from Sales Hacker :

Notice how their sales representative opens with a quick introduction. Don't make someone listen to a five-minute voicemail, only to find out who’s talking in the last 15 seconds. They probably won't make it all the way to the end of the voicemail anyway.

Their sales team also uses social proof to back up their work. Sharing specific success metrics helps build credibility and show value.

After you leave this type of voicemail, we recommend having your sales team send a follow-up email to encourage people to contact you that way. This can help phone-shy prospects learn more about the products you’re selling in a way that they're comfortable with.

Pro-tip: Become a sales email master with this 6-day sales email boot camp.

4. Presentation sales pitch deck example

Delivered on a slideshow and presented by a sales representative at your company, presentations are one of the most traditional forms of selling.

But it comes with its own challenges, and it’s not just technical problems you’ll have to prepare for when delivering a sales presentation. Whether it’s a private pitch to a single company or a presentation for an industry event, you need to grab your audience’s attention.

Take this sales deck example from GoSquared :

The cover slide not only shares their value proposition but also showcases valuable social proof with badges and reviews from credible tech review sites.

Bonus: visuals improve your sales presentations because they are processed 60,000 times faster than text . Also, storytelling is always a good way to improve your sales pitch.

In your sales pitch deck, include considering images of the founders. Allowing the audience to relate to the brand through names and faces lets the speaker explain the brand’s history in a fun way — oh, and in case you ever want to overload a presentation with numbers, 63% of event attendees remember stories , while only 5% remember statistics.

5. Elevator pitch example

Think about the last time you were asked, “What do you do?” Chances are you were caught off-guard and struggled to string together a concise pitch that explains who you are, what you do, and your unique selling proposition .

The elevator pitch is a two-minute speech that should be up your sleeve—and ready to be delivered to anyone who asks.

Here's an example of a great elevator pitch from G2 Crowd .

And the kicker? It's only 21 seconds long.

Pretty impressive.

What we like most about this sales pitch example is the tone of voice. No jargon, plain English.

That’s key to perfecting your elevator pitch: not over-selling your product or sounding like the stereotypical sleazy salesperson.

6. Follow-up sales pitch example

Speaking of follow-ups, our final sales pitch example covers just that: the art of following up with a prospect who hasn’t returned your previous messages.

Did you know that it takes on average five attempts to close a sale ? That’s a shocking statistic—especially when only 30% of salespeople push for more communication attempts after just one email.

Make it a top priority to follow up with prospective customers. Whether you spoke to them at an event, over the phone, or via email, you could get a head-start on your competition—just by being persistent.

This follow-up sales pitch example from Zendesk is a winner:

This smooths the path for the sender to prove they were interested in the previous conversation by briefly touching on a specific pain point, rather than of firing off a generic email.

This follow-up sales pitch is short and to-the-point, offering to answer questions without putting too much pressure.

Because it ends with a call to action that prompts a phone call, this follow-up email template gives you a much better shot at converting lukewarm leads into red-hot contacts.

Use these sales pitch examples to close more deals.

As a sales rep, your pitch is your bread and butter—no matter what you’re selling (or who you’re pitching to)—which means you should definitely put some time and effort into perfecting your own.

The next time you’re writing a cold call script or perfecting your email template, try using a few elements in these sales script examples and see how you can improve the flow of your own sales pitch.

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Home Visit Legislation: A Sales Pitch For Family Surveillance?

I’ve heard rumblings from folks in a number of states about pending legislation to establish home visit programs for expectant families or families with newborns or pre-school age children. So many families are struggling. Poverty is at an all time high. When hearing about such bills, those who have not been faced with the challenge of navigating impersonal bureaucracies, will likely think, “Thank goodness! Our elected officials are recognizing how hard things are and are stepping up to do something for those people.”

For those who think that, I wish you were right, but the reality is considerably more troubling. I follow money, and it tells a different story. It tells the tale of a sweeping program of “ collective impact ” cultivated by consultancies like Third Sector Capital Partners , FSG , and the Nonprofit Finance Fund . Strive Together , a non-profit program incubated in Cincinnati, OH under the wing of Gates Foundation-funded Knowledgeworks (promoter of learning ecosystems), will carry out the program.

Interactive map of Strive Together board here .

This initiative has been brought to scale with support from influential banks and foundations led by Living Cities , the United Way, and representatives of the Federal Reserve. Through carefully chosen “ backbone organizations ” and “conveners,” Strive Together’s pathways are being set up to channel tens of millions of private “impact investments” while harvesting personal data on an almost unimaginably vast scale. Central to this enterprise is the Annie E. Casey Foundation (UPS money) that sought to leverage a treasure trove of “ Kids Count ” data and trigger an expansive program of impact investing via the creation of Mission Investors Exchange back in 2005 . The organization now boasts over 120 members.

Interactive map of Living Cities funders here .

Members of the Strive Network, and its deep-pocketed backers, seek to track human capital “from cradle to career,” reaping profits from digitally managed lives every step of the way. This is becoming possible as ubiquitous computing through mobile devices and wearable technologies is normalized. Digital profiling doesn’t have to be anything fancy; smart phones, tablets, and maybe some type of virtual assistant (digital minder) will suffice.

It is a model that outsources public services (via austerity-enforced privatization) to non-profits that are funded through “pay for success” contracts. These services then push people’s interactions online as much as possible to generate required “impact” data. Debt taken out to pay for the services is securitized (like those toxic, bundled mortgages that precipitated the 2008 economic crisis), which permits hedge funds to legally gamble on human misery in real time. Profiling the poor is a central feature of this system. It is fueled by poverty. Thus, logic dictates, it will never eliminate the source of its profit. Instead, proponents will attempt to shift responsibility for economic violence back onto victims, insisting they simply “make better choices,” preferably with the assistance of a behavior-tracking app .

All of this is tied into the “what works” “Moneyball for Government” agenda my colleague Carolyn Leith helpfully lays out here .

While predatory financiers think they can “short” the lives of the poor with impunity, I choose to believe those who know the truth can disrupt the disrupters. We must commit ourselves to pulling back the curtain on these neoliberal programs masquerading as “progressive” policy, expose the poison pills embedded in them, and fight for the care people deserve as fellow humans, not commodities whose futures are fodder for speculative trading. If this is new to you, and you need more information, see this series and my video “Gambling With Our Futures.”

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows the plan. His wife Connie serves on Strive’s board, and his investment firm just put $59 million into Social Solutions, a software platform to track performance measures in social service delivery. They’ve also directed $50 million into Blue Meridian Partners, a “results-oriented” philanthropy focused on children and youth. Wink, wink, Ballmer’s not just in it “for the kids;” he’s in it for the kids’ data.

Interactive map of Blue Meridian Partners here .

This sheds light on why home visit and ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) scoring protocols are being fast-tracked as “emergency” bills in Washington State right now. The state hosts three different Strive partnerships (Bellvue, Tacoma and South King County, South Seattle) including the Road Map Project , one its first proofs of concept. Last spring, the Ballmer Group brought Andrea (Andi) Smith on board. Smith had previously served as Governor Jay Inslee’s director of external affairs, acting as a senior policy advisor on human service issues. She’s now charged with strategic planning around Ballmer’s “civic activism.”

Watch Ballmer’s speech from a 2017 Dallas County Education Investors meeting in  here .

Strive’s influence extends to early childhood, early literacy, and community school programs in nearly seventy communities that touch 13 million children. Click here to see the list of participants: urban and suburban, affluent and poor spread across every corner of the United States. Those funding home visit programs, the foot in the proverbial “cradle to career” door, are the very ones behind the tech takeover of public schools and the development of global impact investment markets.

Home visits are key, because that is where baseline data, including ACE screenings , will be collected on each child. Without comprehensive baselines, it will be hard for the backers of so-called “evidence-based” interventions to take credit for (and profit from) “fixing” children who will be “risk-scored” from birth onwards. This push to lay the groundwork for “collective impact” is also, I believe, a driving force behind California Governor Gavin Newsom’s “child-focused” state budget. He was involved in a “collective impact” program, HOPE , during his time as mayor of San Francisco. Newsom knows what lies ahead, and his Bay Area fin-tech base will be well served if a comprehensive data collection system starting in infancy comes to pass.

When considering how home visit programs are likely to play out, it is important to recognize healthcare and social service sectors are experiencing data-driven, austerity-imposed, digital hostile takeovers not unlike what we have seen in public school classrooms. Medical professionals and care workers, like teachers, are losing autonomy to standardized protocols, rubrics, imposed scripts, and oversized caseloads. Cameron’s Graham’s compelling brief offers important insights into the chilling reality of social workers, called navigators, who attempt to work with the confines of the St. Mungo’s homeless social impact bond in the UK.

As much as these workers may want to do the right thing by families, their ability to do so will be severely constrained unless they can collectively push back against financialized, privatized service delivery. I eagerly await the day rank and file teachers, nurses, and social workers realize what is happening, make common cause, and unite to fight the tech-surveillance “collective impact” agenda.

Clayton Christensen , Harvard business professor and promoter of blended learning, has targeted both education and healthcare for disruption . Data is the new oil and much of it flows through schools and care settings. They are coming for it. “Pay for success” programs in Santa Clara County, California, which include Strong Start and the Big Lift, were catalyzed by Fred Ferrer who brought Christensen in to pitch outcomes-based contracting. Ferrer spent his career at The Health Trust, focused on public health, during which time he also served on the board of Rocketship Charter Schools.

As a consultant to Santa Clara County, Ferrer prepared a 2018 report , Universal Access to Early Childhood Care, Education and Health Services, in which he pitched a concierge model of school-based social workers that would work with families in two of San Jose’s low-income school districts. The catch is that the county ALSO hosts an interoperable data warehouse funded by Mark Zuckerberg and is the target of significant impact investments via the influential Silicon Valley Community Foundation and other venture philanthropies.

It seems entirely possible Ferrer’s recommendations, while appearing benevolent, are actually setting vulnerable families up to be exploited by social service agencies through data profiling. All sorts of data are being co-mingled for analysis: mental health, judicial involvement, health, and academic. With predictive analytics on the rise in child protective services here and abroad, people should be concerned.

Last week, the UK’s “What Works Centre for Children Social Care,” led by former head of New York’s “nudge unit,” shared plans to begin a program of machine learning on data collected by caseworkers, which has raised considerable alarm . Understanding the ways social services have historically been used as weapons to control the poor, particularly Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, it is easy to see how something as seemingly innocuous as a home visit, could go terribly, terribly wrong. If you can’t picture it, I suggest reading Louise Erdrich’s short story, American Horse , and imagine that scenario today with the addition of Internet of Things tracking and AI enforcement.

See my previous post on Silicon Valley pay for success here .

Interactive version of the map below here .

What would the home visit / social work equivalent of a Rocketship charter school model be? Caseworkers assigned tablets and tasked with gathering copious data via screening tools tied to a child’s unique identifier? Maybe a slew of parenting apps are part of the picture? Parents monitored to see if they download recommended programs and participate consistently? Will new moms be leaned on to accept listening devices like the LENA “ talk pedometer ” (below) in their homes? Will parents be sold on the supposed benefits of online pre-k? Will subtle product placements for affiliated charter franchises be casually inserted into conversations?

In a January 2019 report on early childhood trends, Big Ideas, Little Learners , the Omidyar Network outlines many investment opportunities in early childhood education and health. Technology-mediated brain training is touted, because research (much of it underwritten by hedge fund interests) indicates it’s more cost-effective to shift non-cognitive data than academic knowledge. Hedge funds need dynamic data to enable their betting. For that reason SEL data is where investors are directing their efforts, underwriting rubrics and systems to productively manage behavioral “success” at home, in the grocery store produce aisle, in pre-k, in classrooms, and on playgrounds.

That’s what KIPP charter schools have been up to all along; their franchise, an enormous test bed of behavioral conditioning. They were tasked with refining cost-effective techniques for broader roll out. Now, it seems, with the passage of the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act that time has come. We’re looking at pre-k charter proposals now. Surely that influence is going to trickle down into home settings soon enough. The drumbeat of digital bootstrapping grows louder and louder as messaging around “growth mindset” and “resilience” for parents and children butts up against the dire realities of lived experience with increasing force.

Source : Beyond Content: Incorporating Social and Emotional Learning Into the Strive Together Framework, 2013.

In this uncertain 4 th Industrial Revolution future where the entire concept of “work” remains fraught and uncertain, investors plan to continue concentrating their wealth by distracting the public and selling them on the importance of “soft skills,” “whole child education,” and “brain training.” They will, of course, downplay the digital tracking, profiling, and surveillance that comes along with it. In 2013, Strive created a task force to examine metrics for social-emotional learning and figure out which traits were “malleable.” That the report dismisses “critical thinking,” because it is not correlated to academic “success,” is quite telling. In retrospect, though, it shouldn’t come as a surprise given that public education (now extending to early education for toddlers and even infants) has historically been used to reinforce social stratification undergirded by structural racism, a case laid out by Tim Scott in his post “Common Schools and the Nationalistic Aims of Public Education in the U.S.”

Omidyar Network, author of the Big Ideas, Little Learners report is a global impact investor focused on ed-tech, digital identity, fin-clusion and e-government “solutions.” Its founder is Pierre Omidyar of eBay. The organization has its fingers in many pies: pre-k digital identity (Amply), prison labor impact securities (The Last Mile), Blockchain credentialing (Learning Machine), and behavior-tracking apps (Hopelab). The organization heavily invests in disruptive education and early childhood models that center on technology (Bridges International Academies online scripted curriculum for Global South clients) and data surveillance (Zamzee, family activity tracker). While their pitch for early childhood education sounds compelling at first blush, the image below, a pre-k model advanced by one of their grantees in South Africa, tells the tale. You can paint a cargo container and put in a few windows, but that doesn’t make it humane. When they pitch poverty apps, look beyond the “shiny” and remember Innovation Edge’s cargo container pre-schools.

Pierre Omidyar’s wife Pam launched a “scientific” enterprise called Hopelab that employs gamified social science research to change behaviors from medical compliance, to emotional regulation, to family fitness. They’ve also partnered on the Nurse Family Partnership’s pay for success home visit pilot program in South Carolina to test Goal Mama. This app was designed to deliver digital nudges to pregnant moms deemed to be “at risk,” because we all know the only thing that stands between a low-income parent and economic stability is well-designed software…

Click here for the slide share the South Carolina Nurse Family Partnership used to pitch the Goal Mama program.

Interactive map for Hopelab / Goal Mama and Omidyar Network’s projects here .

The screenshots from Omidyar Network’s report show how it has positioned itself to benefit from the growing number of impoverished families who rely on social services like Medicaid, the infants pawns in a brazenly calculating scheme. It should be noted that Omidyar Network is not merely an individual investor, it is a key player in a larger social impact network that includes even more powerful interests like the Vatican . Social entrepreneurs, benefit corporations, and venture philanthropists have been extremely busy over the past decade crafting markets for digital interventions that will shape behaviors to benefit tech companies and the impact investors who partner with them to achieve what they call “measurable social benefit.”

For this market to function, all the players must agree to comprehensively screen poor families, identifying them within a deficit framework as having “gaps” that are “fixable.” The “solutions” for these gaps must be ones that focus on altering individual behavior, never systemic causes that could lead to radical solutions that would be true solutions. Technological interventions, often supported by neuro-scientific “evidence,” are foregrounded. Deals will line up venture philanthropy backers who pay for the digital services. Everyone then sits back to wait while “majority minority” populations are compelled to create data later “harvested” for a tidy sum after conditions of the outcomes-based contracts are met.

South Carolina’s Nurse Family Partnership’s home visit program is the intended model to scale as noted in a 2017 project overview prepared by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. It was funded in coordination with the state’s Medicaid program as a pay for success venture with support from the Harvard Government Performance Lab.

South Carolina Pay for Success, Nurse Family Partnership Home Visit interactive map here .

With the passage of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (FEPA), home visit programs are an impact investor’s dream-come-true. I know. I was in DC for the bipartisan celebration of the Social Impact Partnerships Pay for Results Act, which allocated $100 million to get the pay for success party started. Home visits were front and center.

The Nurse Family Partnership is a venerable institution that’s been around for over 40 years and annually serves nearly 35,000 families in 42 states. I’m sure it has done commendable work, but in anticipation of a vast expansion of home visit services, an examination of their current funding sources is warranted. The following funders are among those that have contributed $10,000 or more in the past year according to their website.

Nurse Family Partnership Major Donors, interactive map here .

Arnold Foundation : John of Enron fame and his wife Laura are major backers of “evidence-based” “what works” “outcomes-based” contracting, supporters of secret policing surveillance programs, and developers of racially biased bail algorithms. They were key players in advancing the passage of FEPA and SIPPRA.

Ballmer Group : The investment fund of Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, whose wife Connie is on the board of the Strive Together “collective impact” network and who has invested in social solutions impact measurement software. Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn and its ties to the LRNG badging program gives it an advantageous position with regards to youth digital workforce portfolios.

Bezos Family Foundation : Amazon Web Services, with its multitude of national security contracts, would probably love an expanded system of data collection on poor families. Jeff’s mom, Jacklyn has shared a stage with human capital economist James “I’ll guarantee you a 10% ROI on early childhood investments” Heckman at a recent Aspen Institute event and serves on multiple committees of Paul Tudor Jones’s Robin Hood Foundation.

Blue Meridian Partners : A collective fund of a half billion dollars for “high-impact” youth serving programs chaired by Stanley Druckenmiller, hedge fund manager and close friend of Paul Tudor Jones, founder of the Robin Hood Foundation.

Duke Endowment : It has invested $50 million in Blue Meridian Partners.

Google.org : The philanthropic arm of the big data behemoth that dominates cloud-based software in US classrooms, has its eyes on Internet of Things managed healthcare delivery through it’s “smart city” spin-off, City Block, and a hand in prison-based.

The New Venture Fund : Has ties to the Connected Learning Alliance, digital badging, and workforce pathways programs.

Non-Profit Finance Fund : Consulting firm formerly headed by George Overholser, now of Third Sector Capital Partners, that promotes use of pay for success nationally.

Oak Foundation : Another “next-gen,” digital learning proponent.

Overdeck Foundation : Major supporter of social-emotional learning interventions that embrace interventions targeting “malleable” traits that promote academic “success.”

Schwab Foundation : Supports Summit Learning, charter schools, redesigned “innovative” education models including work-based learning programs.

Tipping Point : David Lurie has set up this organization as Robin Hood Foundation West with support from Silicon Valley tech moguls.

We live in an era where data is gold. Poor people needing services (or education) are seen as potential goldmines by predatory financiers, assuming their poverty can be “profitably managed.” We are sliding into a new economic paradigm, one where people are valued as consumers of social services and producers of “impact data.” If we don’t speak out, eventually large segments of the population will be tracked via screen and wearable technologies, generating data linked to public benefits whose value is contained and regulated through digital platforms.

Picture linking up Sesame credit, nudges, surveillance of the public sphere, and dynamic pricing to digital housing vouchers or SNAP benefits via government issued smart phones. It’s not a far-fetched plan. The Gates Foundation, among others, is pushing a shift towards “government to citizen” digital payments through the Better than Cash Alliance.   They equate it to investing in public infrastructure, only with the added benefit of being able to impose de-facto digital surveillance on populations that, when unified and motivated, could upend the status quo (or at least eject the likes of Amazon from their communities). Their goal? Manage people as individuals. Make it about pushing the poor to make better choices. Keep the poor accountable rather than the systems designed by oligarchs to impose poverty and concentrate wealth.

It is a horrible situation. It is hard to get up every day knowing this is coming, and yet it is undeniable that this machine is advancing at full tilt. I believe those at the top think that with slick branding and enough money to offer “seats at the table” to anyone who might be inclined to say, “hey, the emperor has no clothes,” they will get away with it. The fact that this is coming with bipartisan support, perhaps even more so that it is coming from the liberal corner means to fight it, people must have a deeper understanding of the nature of social justice and racial capitalism.

People of privilege, people holding onto a “white savior” mentality are going to have a hard time understanding the dangers behind these “helpful” home visit programs. People who think Democrats can do no wrong are also going to have a hard time calling it out, because it is baked into many of the supposedly “progressive” policies that the liberal main stream has been promoting for years, not realizing how fin-tech and impact investing were inextricably woven in. How do we have conversations about systems of paternalistic technocracy that are swiftly deploying programs of toxic whiteness under the cover of progressive ideals? In this moment of meme culture and knee jerk reactions, I’m not sure, but I’m willing to try.

It is crucial that we try.

Based on all of my research it seems clear that unless home visit legislation can be structured to support the interests of the people over investors, home visit campaigns will be a colossal set up to harvest data from the poor; sell them on digital non-solutions to economic dispossession and structural racism; and profile their children into suitably low-level slots in the cradle to career human capital pipeline.

If home visit initiatives truly wanted to be supportive of all families they would:

1) be optional

2) not be conditioned on data collection or reliant on longitudinal data systems

3) not involve assignment of unique identifiers to parents, children, or care providers

3) guarantee families the right know what data is being collected, review it, challenge it, and delete it at will

4) not advocate digital interventions or monitoring

5) prohibit machine learning on and / or AI processing of collected data

7) offer support that is culturally-responsive

8) treat caseworkers as professionals, ensure they receive a salary with benefits commensurate with the importance of this work, and provide training and support grounded in face to face relationships not CBE online modules

9) require service providers be accountable to the communities they serve

10) prohibit use of “pay for success” finance and “outcomes-based contracting”

Addressing systemic conditions that engender poverty should be adopted instead of solutions that put primary responsibility on individual behavior. There is no one “correct” way to parent. Governments must not attempt to coerce families to conform to conditions of “whiteness” that reinforce historic systems of domination. We must do better. Please use this information to educate your communities about what is coming. We must work quickly to put protections in place.

wrenchinthegears

6 thoughts on “ home visit legislation: a sales pitch for family surveillance ”.

Another amazing, well-documented and scary as …. demonstration of what’s happening to destroy public institutions and individual decisions, and with the explicit cooperation of Congress. I looked at just two of your references… the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (FEPA) and the Social Impact Partnerships Pay for Results Act which too few people, including me, are paying attention to. legitimateThese federal “acts” legitimate unparalleled data-gathering and surveillance for the purpose of profit seeking and hollowing out local and individual decision making. The active participation of Congress in dismantling democratic governance is upon us all, and paid for by mega philanthropies with PR firms attracted to the opportunity to make everything appear to be perfectly “reasonable.” Who can be against evidence-based everything? Who dare speak against profit-seeking? Please keep daring to challenge these mind-numbing activities. If I were younger and more able I would be doing more.

Thanks so much for this amazing work.

Here in the UK, where social impact bonds were pioneered, it’s clear that family therapy is a key building block of this new financial market. At the moment, the focus is on ‘troubled’ or ‘at risk’ families.

One of the first UK SIBs, back in 2012, was the Essex Family Therapy Programme. This ‘targeted intervention’, commissioned by Essex County Council and delivered by a non-profit called Action for Children, was aimed at families whose teenaged children were at risk of being taken into care.

Multi-systemic therapy was used over a three- to five-month period to ‘improve parenting and rebuild positive relationships’. MST is a proprietary treatment licensed by a US company; the therapists on the Essex MST programme had to work ‘in adherence to the guidelines set out by MST Services Limited’. The turnover of therapists was high, at over 30 per cent.

The outcome metrics for the SIB included the number of days spent by children in residential care; their engagement with school; their contact with the criminal justice system; and their personal well-being (a particularly ‘malleable’ outcome, as you note).

The Essex SIB was backed by a number of ‘social investors’, including Bridges Ventures (now Bridges Fund Management), co-founded by Sir Ronald Cohen in 2002. The SIB was run by Social Finance UK, co-founded by Cohen in 2007.

An interim evaluation found that – as always – the programme was hitting its targets. The payout to investors has been capped at £7m (the total initial investment was £3.1m).

In the spring of 2012, Essex County Council’s Head of Finance discussed the SIB in an interview with a local government website:

‘Of course [the investors] want a return for their money because they are taking a risk. They will only get paid on results. That’s why we have to very carefully assess that the children we put through the therapy will benefit from it. … Some people invest in gold, some people invest in stocks and some people invest in social impact. They’re looking for a return …’

Nick O’Donohoe, the Goldman Sachs / JP Morgan man who co-founded Big Society Capital with Cohen in 2012, described the Essex SIB as ‘a major breakthrough’, showing ‘the potential for the development of the market in social investment’. (O’Donohoe later worked on ‘blended finance’ for the Gates Foundation.)

More SIBs on the Essex MST model are now being put in place. One is the Positive Families Partnership, covering five London boroughs and backed by Bridges Fund Management. Still in the pipeline is the Bridges-run Family Therapy LLP, operating in London and three other regions; and a SIB commissioned by Lancashire County Council, funding ‘a range of family preservation interventions’.

Overall, we are seeing the infrastructure for this new investment market being put into place across a range of public services: early years, mental health, workforce development (unemployed teens), care of the elderly, homelessness, even care of the terminally ill.

The messaging is identical on both sides of the pond: the focus on ‘outcomes’ that are both measurable and ‘malleable’; the need for ‘evidence-based interventions’ (‘what works’); ‘rigorous’ data collection and analysis (‘data-driven decision-making’), etc, etc.

We also have at least one Collective Impact Bond on the StriveTogether model. This is the West London Zone, a direct knock-off of the Harlem Children’s Zone. The founding sponsor of the WLZ was Sir Paul Marshall, co-founder of the Marshall-Wace hedge fund. As you pointed out in your piece on ACEs scores and Pay for Success, Marshall is a leading figure in the Ark organisation, set up by a group of hedge fund bosses in 2002. They’re pushing impact investment in both education – they have their own chain of schools – and social work (they are also active in Africa and India).

Finally, you mentioned the London Homelessness SIB, another early ‘proof of concept’. This SIB, which targeted rough sleepers in West London, ran from 2012 to 2016. One of the ‘delivery partners’ for the SIB was the homelessness charity St Mungo’s. Last year, they were found to have assisted in the illegal deportation of EU nationals. A key performance indicator – or ‘payout metric’ – for this SIB was the number of ‘reconnections’ (i.e. deportations) achieved by providers.

According to the government’s evaluation of the SIB, ‘ investors … were happy with overall performance and thus with their return on investment’.

A key performance indicator – or ‘payout metric’ – for this SIB was the number of ‘reconnections’ (i.e. deportations) achieved by providers.

Idea sounds like Trump’s policies for people seeking asylum in the US, especially at the border with Mexico. There is no SIB involved as far as I know, but profit seeking is rampant among contractors hired to do the unconscionable, including the separation of children from their parents and no records available for reuniting them.

“Can Machine Learning Double Your Social Impact” (SSIR, 2-20-2019) Student data collection for the program, Educate Girls, has frightening implications. One use identified in the article that was provided prior to the illustration of Educate Girls, was to predict where conflict will breakout. It’s not a leap to tie in data collection associated with “machine learning” to another story about women, the Apple/Google app that allowed Saudi Arabian “guardians” to track women who were their wards. By edict, all women in Saudi Arabia are forced to have “guardians”.

No surprise- the company authoring the SSIR “Machine Learning…”promotion article is partners with the Gates Foundation.

Yes. SSIR is a mouthpiece for impact investing. Stanford has many programs that are advancing the “social impact” agenda. There really isn’t any impartial media anymore, unless people do their own research. It’s all been integrated into the machine.

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San Francisco Giants

Colorado Rockies

Jorge soler hits mlb season-best 478-foot hr, birdsong strikes out 12 as giants beat rockies 3-2, brendan rodgers lifts a 2-run hr for the rockies.

Brendan Rodgers mashes a home run to trim the Rockies' deficit against the Giants.

DENVER -- — Jorge Soler opened the game with the longest homer in the majors this season, rookie Hayden Birdsong struck out a career-high 12 and the San Francisco Giants beat the Colorado Rockies 3-2 on Sunday.

Soler hit the fourth pitch of the game 478 feet to dead center for his 11th homer of the season, staking the Giants to an early lead. Tyler Fitzgerald led off the third with his second homer of the series and fourth of the year, and Matt Chapman scored on a passed ball in the fourth inning to give San Francisco a 3-0 lead it never relinquished.

Birdsong (2-0), making his fifth career start, didn’t allow a hit until Brendan Rodgers’ two-out, two-run homer in the fourth inning. The 22-year-old right-hander walked one in six innings, his longest outing since having his contract selected June 26. He recorded the most strikeouts by a San Francisco pitcher this season.

“I was landing curveballs over and over again, the slider was there today, just felt good,” Birdsong said. “I knew (Rodgers) was sitting on a slider, didn’t quite get it where I needed to, he leaned out over the plate and got a hold of it.”

Camilo Doval got the final three outs for his 18th save.

Giants manager Bob Melvin wasn’t around to see the win after getting ejected before the first pitch after he and bench coach Ryan Christensen delivered the lineup to home plate umpire Alex MacKay.

“I just talked too much,” Melvin said. “Umpiring’s a hard job, I’m aware of that, just probably said too much. I didn’t plan that, it wasn’t choreographed. I probably went too far.”

Colorado failed to complete a series sweep on the day franchise icon Todd Helton was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Helton’s speech was played on the big scoreboard approximately 30 minutes before Sunday’s first pitch.

Helton is the only player elected to the Hall of Fame after spending his entire career with the Rockies.

Colorado starter Ryan Feltner (1-10) struck out six in seven solid innings, but remains winless since April 12, a span of 17 starts.

“I thought he got stronger as the game went on,” manager Bud Black said of Feltner. “A little frustrated early, but he bounced back and kept it together.”

TRAINER’S ROOM

Giants: RHP Alex Cobb (hip/shoulder) tossed five scoreless innings for Triple-A Sacramento on Saturday night. Cobb has been on the 60-day injured list since March 25th.

Rockies: C Elias Diaz was not in the lineup after leaving Saturday night’s game with what manager Bud Black described as a “little calf strain.”

Giants: LHP Blake Snell (0-3, 6.31 ERA) is expected to be activated from the injured list to open a series at the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday night. Snell has been on the IL since June 3rd with a left groin strain.

Rockies: LHP Austin Gomber (2-6, 4.61) opens a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox on Monday night.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

COL wins 2-1

Game information.

• Home Plate Umpire - Alex Mackay
• First Base Umpire - Brennan Miller
• Second Base Umpire - Brian O'Nora
• Third Base Umpire - Chris Conroy

2024 National League West Standings

Team	W	L	PCT	GB	STRK
	59	41	.590	-	W3
	52	50	.510	8	W2
	51	50	.505	8.5	L2
	48	52	.480	11	W1
	36	64	.360	23	L1

Wyatt Langford hits game-ending single for Rangers in 4-3 win over White Sox in 10 innings

Bobby witt jr. homers, triples and doubles in the royals' 10-4 win over the diamondbacks, wyatt langford lines a walk-off single for rangers.

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The indulgence being marketed by Tetzel distressed Luther because he saw it as misinforming lay people (i.e., non-clerics) about crucial aspects of God's plan for redeeming fallen humanity ­- about, in other words, the whole purpose of history, and about the nature (specifically, the Will) of God.  To be misinformed in essentials about the nature of God means that what one ends up obeying is a false image of God.  This constitutes a "mortal sin" (see the note to Thesis 2), and leads (if not corrected) to damnation.  Specifically, Albert's indulgence (as represented by Tetzel) encroached on the sacrament of penance.

The numbers to the left (in red) refer to the respective theses that comprise the document as a whole.

• In the note to Thesis 6, you will find some suggestions about how to think of the organizational strategy Luther follows in listing his first 52 theses.   

[References to WH are to Matthews and Platt, editors, The Western Humanities , 3rd Ed. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1993.  These need updating, since this text is now in at least its 5th edition.]

• Two categories of sin are recognized. Mortal sins involve turning away from the eternal good, or God. (The breach of Faith committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden constituted mortal sin. So did what Cain did to Abel.) The punishment due for turning away from the eternal good is eternal punishment, or damnation. Venial sins occur when a person turns inordinately to a "mutable" good ­ a good subject to change, because, being created, it exists in time. (Such goods are thus also called "temporal" or "earthly" goods.) Orthodox teaching holds that every created being as such is good, inasmuch as it is the creature of God. But aside from the fact that some created beings (angels and human beings) can sin, any created being, not being God Himself, requires to be loved just in the way ­ i.e., in the degree and circumstances ­ that God ordains. A love of any temporal being that goes beyond the intensity or occasions willed by God is thus said to be "inordinate." Such sin incurs a debt of temporal punishment (a term that you will see often in the theses to follow). The priest (via his ordination by a bishop appointed in turn by the pope) is a designated representative of the pope. (We meet here the general concept of vicars and vicarage , which will become a focus of even more fundamental dispute when Luther a few years later comes to attack the even more fundamental notion that the pope is Christ's own designated vicar.) Hence when a priest administering the sacrament of penance imposes satisfaction on the penitent, he is acting on behalf of the pope. This explains why Luther speaks interchangeably of "penalties...imposed by [the pope's] own authority" (Thesis 5), or of "those imposed by himself" (Thesis 20), or of "penalties of sacramental satisfaction, which are of human appointment" (Thesis 34).

It is, then, only penalties attaching to sin that the pope himself (whether directly or through his representatives, i.e., priests) can remit.  Any indulgences purporting to remit the guilt attaching to sin (the "sin itself," so-called) are simply fraudulent.

Conclusion:   these penalties of sin -- the remorse suffered by souls in purgatory on their way to heaven -- are outside the power of the pope to remit.   Any indulgences purporting to remit the suffering of souls in purgatory (penalties for sin being experienced by them, namely, their remorse for having committed them) are likewise fraudulent.  

• What remains are those penalties imposed by the pope or the canon law, in the context of the sacrament of penance, as administered by priests. [This is the language of Theses 5 and 20.  Thesis 34 uses the formula "appointed by man" (since the pope and the priests are not God) to describe "sacramental satisfaction" -- i.e., penalties of the sort the priest declares the penitant to owe).]  Coming at this category from still another point of view, authorities described them as "temporal punishment."  (See the note to Thesis 2.)  Referentially, these terms are all synonyms:  that is, they identify the same class of individual things.  Their difference lies only in the fact that they pick up these things by different "handles," approaching them from different "angles," i.e., via different relationships they have with other things.

Theses 7-8 focus on Tetzel's claim that the indulgence he was selling was issued by the pope and had the power to remit guilt for sins.

• Luther circles back to this theme later on, in Theses 75-76.

Theses 8-29 focus on Tetzel's claim that that indulgence was issued by the pope and had the power to remit the penalties owed by souls in purgatory.

Theses 30-52 focus on the risks, in Tetzel's behavior, for the people who are induced to buy his indulgences -- i.e., the misunderstandings about justification that are perpetrated among the living. (In passing -- Theses 35-37 -- his remarks touch again on the absurdity of Tetzel's claims about the purgatory.)  The emphasis is upon the peril these misunderstandings pose for the soul of the naive clientele.

• In Theses 30-40, the chief emphasis here is the necessity, for sinners, of a proper understanding of the requirement for genuine contrition , and the way in which indiscriminate peddling of indulgences implicitly preaches the contrary.
• In Theses 41-46, the emphasis shifts the risks that lie in presenting purchase of pardons as instances of good works, when, in their effect on the soul, or what they signify about the condition of the soul, is far inferior to what is accomplished by works of charity.
• Thesis 52 sums up this line of attack.
• [??Thesis 47:  does it fit in this organizational scheme? Or does it belong with Theses 48-51??]

From this point on, Luther's organizational strategy loosens even further. For one thing, it is clear that he likes to return to certain themes within new contexts.  Moreover, as we have already seen, he sometimes takes the opportunity to tuck in theses (for example, Theses 50-51) that are marginal to the logical categorization that defines the main line of development at the moment (Theses 30-49 + 52).  Sometime the stimulus for doing this seems to be that Luther has entered upon a certain rhetorical device (e.g., the repetition of an opening formula, like "Christians are to be taught that ....") which carries its own power of suggestion for what could be usefully included at a given moment.  

After Thesis 52 , there does not seem to be a definite overall pattern of organization at work, although there are clearly stretches within which Luther is focusing on a particular theme (e.g., what are the true Treasures of the Church? [ Theses 56-68 ]) or a rhetorical turn (e.g., Theses 81-91 , where the move is to point out how the pardons being sold by Tetzel bring the pope into disrepute with the laity by stimulating them to sarcastic impieties that nevertheless seem plausible on the false assumption that the pope supports the sale of such pardons).

• How does Luther stand with respect to the bull Salvator Noster (1476)?

Note that Luther's tactic in the Ninety-five Theses is to assume that the Pope is unaware of the doctrinal errors being preached in his name by a "mad" servant, who is betraying his master. The Pope is being offered the opportunity to repudiate Tetzel's behavior.

• Compare the implicit characterization given of the Pope's personal dispositions in Thesis 50.
• How does this re-definition of the concept of "saint" square with the particular theory of the Treasury of Merit set forth in Pope Clement VI's bull Unigenitus (1343)?
• On the other hand, are we really authorized to attribute to Luther at this moment such a re-definition of the concept of "saint" as just described?  Consider Thesis 58.
• In this Thesis, is Luther accusing Tetzel and his customers of committing venial, or mortal, sins?
• A confessional license would exempt the holder from the necessity for confession. Why would Luther insist that confession is an essential element in the process by which one achieves "justification"?
• What do you understand to be Luther's ultimate position on the value and effect of works in the salvational scheme? Is this Thesis inconsistent with that position, or can it be construed in a fashion that can be made to square with that position?
• What is the purpose of these ceremonies? (What is prayed for in them?)

In what sense is it a confidence game to accept money for performing such services?

• (Is the issue of simony also at stake here, i.e., separately and distinctly?)
• The force of your answer will come home to you to the degree that you explicitly recall for yourself what the effects of Original Sin are, according to the theology we constructed in the spirit of Augustine upon the Genesis account of the Fall of Mankind.

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