Why do most pitch books suck?

You already have a ‘canned sales presentation’ dished out by your marketing team. They told you that you will be shot in the head, if you changed any of the ‘carefully crafted’ the material. To their credit, they put in a lot of hard work to create the ‘official pitch book’ on a Multimedia CD, to serve as a leave behind material. It looked like the ‘tool’ would be an instant hit. But in reality it doesn’t pan out that way.

The presentation turns out to be an ‘instant yawn producer’. No matter how hard you try, your audiences don’t seem to connect with the content. After the first few seconds of the presentation, they begin to lean back slowly and sink into their chairs. Next, they let out that dreaded yawn. In fact, some of the audience is so polite in their attempt to stifle the yawn, that you can see tears forming in their eyes. 

You then try to hide some slides in an attempt to recover the situation. You rearrange the order of the slides. But, nothing seems to work. You come out disappointed after your ‘short pitch delivery’, which flew over your audiences’ head. 

Why do these mishaps happen with ‘Pitch books’ or ‘Sales aids’ used by most organizations? Here is the answer:

Most pitch books are designed like brochures. They educate (read - bore) the unsuspecting prospects about the ‘greatness’ of the company. To ensure that the knowledge is exposed to as many people as possible, companies use their sales people as walking gadgets that convert text to speech. 

No wonder, pitch books suck.

What is the solution? 

Make your marketing team read the following few sentences: 

“Design ‘Pitch books’ that initiate a conversation with the prospects. Let every word center around the concerns and expectations of your customers. Let your sales people build the discussion further, using the pitch book as a starting point”

Yes. Initiate the change. Stop accepting literature that tries to dump information on prospects. Remember, selling is about building a relationship, it’s not about distributing information. 

Happy selling!