Delivering Impactful

Pitches
Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching
Prerequisites to focus on to deliver effective sales pitches:

Complete knowledge about the product: value proposition, key USPs, pricing, payment methods, tangible and
intangible benefits, testimonials, and case studies.

Target market and its characteristics

User personas within the target market

Positioning strategy- Do thorough research on which value propositions or USPs are most relevant for the
user personas identified

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Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching
Prerequisites to focus on to deliver effective sales pitches (continued):

Frequently asked questions and their answers

Objection handling- Research with the help of historical data to understand what kind of objections are
typically raised by the prospects

Formulate strategies/ answers on how you will handle objections

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Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching
Know your competition- Develop a detailed understanding of how your product is better than that of the competitor.
There might be many aspects wherein the competitor’s product is superior to that of yours. Design a clear framework on
how you will handle those objections before getting on a conversation with the prospect.

Research about the customer: Utilize your CRM to research about the overall activity of the customer on your platform
in the last month. In case, it’s a new lead, try to understand the values, aspirations, and needs of the lead from the
limited information available in the CRM. In the case of a B2B setting, read the latest annual report of the company in
detail. If it’s a private company, research the following aspects of the company (that appear on the next 2 slides) from
the official website, Linkedin, news articles, publications, etc.

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Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching

Size of the company and its

Products and Services Mission and Vision
key decision-makers

Key initiatives of the company Competitors

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Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching

Customers Key achievements

Annual report (if a public company) Earnings call transcript (if a

public company)

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Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching- Case Discussion I
Case: Imagine that you work for Unacademy as a Business Development Lead responsible for new user acquisition.
Unacademy has recently launched a 6- month course on Digital Marketing. The cost of the course is Rs 30000 and it
offers 4 live classes every week of 2 hours each. In addition to that, subscribers also receive other benefits like
Certification, Placement Assistance, 1-1 Mentorship, Peer Connect, and Guest Sessions with Industry Leaders. You have
decided to run a New Year offer that will provide subscription benefits to all unpaid users for a trial period of 14 days.
New users can also sign up to avail the same offer.

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Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching- Case Discussion
To get leadership approval for running this offer, you need to answer the following questions:

The offer would be beneficial for which user personas? Identify top 3

How would you pitch your product to each user persona identified in the above step? What value propositions
and USPs would be relevant to each user cohort?

What kind of objections do you think will be raised by the prospects when you try to pitch the subscription
product after the trial period?

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Prerequisites for Impactful Pitching- Case Discussion
To get leadership approval for running this offer, you need to answer the following questions:

How will you handle those objections?

Can you create an FAQ document with relevant questions and their answers

Competitive Analysis- Outline the key competitors in the market and document why consumers should
choose your product over other subscriptions

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General Guidelines of Product Pitching- Context Setting
Step 1: Greet the customer and introduce yourself.

Step 2: Set clear context of the call or the discussion. While setting the context of the discussion, focus on the prospect’s core
problems/ pain points and inform them that the agenda of the discussion is to solve them permanently.

Choose the best option among the following when it comes to setting context while selling a CRM tool:

● I have heard that your company spends XX dollars for every customer who converts. I am calling you from company A to
provide a solution that would reduce your cost of conversion by 45%. Can I please borrow 10 mins of your time so that I
can guide you in detail on how our product will help you optimize your sales conversions?

● Hi, I am XYZ calling from company A. Can I borrow 10 mins of yours to tell you more about our CRM offering?

● Hi, I am XYZ calling from company A. Our company specializes in providing customized CRM offerings for EdTech sales.
Can we get on a Zoom call where I can provide you with a demo?

● Hi, I am XYZ calling from company A. The current CRM tool which your company is using has limited functionality. You
should definitely consider our offering as it is the best CRM tool available in the market

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General Guidelines of Product Pitching- Communicating Value
and Active Listening
Step 3: This is the most important step as the prospect has now agreed to listen to what you have to say. This step can make or
break the situation for you. Hence, make sure to talk about the core USPs and value propositions of the product that are most
relevant to the customer’s current problem.

Take pauses in between and let the customer speak. Encourage the prospect to discuss the core problems that he/ or his
organization is facing. This will help you to provide a customized solution to the customer in accordance with his needs.
Understanding customer issues and needs is very important to position the right USPs and value propositions of the product to
the client. Active listening should also be a part of this step and make sure that the conversation is two-way:

● Top-performing sales agents listen more to the customer’s core issues/ needs than they speak on sales calls
● It is a must to possess a very high level of emotional intelligence to absolutely relate and sympathize with the
customer’s core problems
● Buyers are also likely to select your product if you act as a counselor rather than a seller. Three very important areas to
counsel effectively are:
○ Knowledge about the buyer and her/ his needs
○ Awareness of about your product and how it is better than other offerings in the market
○ Offering favorable pricing to the customers

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General Guidelines of Product Pitching- Pricing
Step 4: Open the forum to the prospect and encourage him/ her to ask probing questions. Keep your list of FAQs and
answers to common probing questions handy so that you can address them with finesse

Step 5: Pricing and Commercials- While discussing pricing initially, always disclose the non-discounted price of the
product. However, post discussing the non-discounted price, provide applicable discounts to the customer, and
communicate that the offer is only available only for a limited period of time. The first level of discounting should be the
minimum discount as decided by the leadership. Take note of the following points to effectively communicate the
pricing of your product:

● Break down the price in terms of expense per day. For example: If you are selling a CRM license that costs $100
per user per year, then break the pricing down to day-wise terms and communicate to the client that the effective
expense would be even less than 30 cents per day per user
● Always, compare the price with the cost savings (or benefits) that the customer would realize with the help of
your product

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General Guidelines of Product Pitching- Pricing
Example 1: If you are selling JEE paid subscription at Unacademy, what you need to communicate is the kind of salaries
that IITians make post their education. Also, stress on the salary gap between an IIT and a non- IIT graduate in general.
Assuming- the cost of the 1-year JEE program is Rs 30000, the average starting CTC which an IITian earns is 10 LPA, and
the average initial payout for a non- IITian stands is 3 LPA. Communicate to the learner that he/ she needs to spend only
Rs 30000 to study for JEE from the best educators of the country, which would equip him/her with the competency to
clear JEE exam and eventually earn 7 lakhs more per year (average case), giving an ROI of 23x.

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General Guidelines of Product Pitching- Pricing
Example 2: Imagine that you are selling a CRM offering to a prospective client. Communicate to the client that how your
product would help in optimizing sales operations and reducing the cost per conversion. Project the annual savings of
the prospective client and compare it with the cost of the license. Be very thorough with case studies pertaining to other
similar companies that bought your CRM offering in the past and gained tangible quantitative benefits. Communicate
the value received by other clients, to your prospect and clearly point out the potential return on investment that can be
expected.

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General Guidelines of Product Pitching- Pricing
Pro Tip: If your product is cheaply priced (compared to competitors), then let the customers know that
you are providing the same tangible benefits at a much lesser cost. However, if you are selling a
premium product that is priced higher than that of the competitor, please be thorough while handling
pricing-related objections. You need to provide a detailed explanation of what the customer would gain
with respect to the additional premium paid to buy your product, compared to a competitor’s product.
You can’t design answers to pricing-related objections in real-time. Hence, please ensure that you have
the answers to pricing-related objections prepared well in advance

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General Guidelines of Product Pitching- Creating FOMO and
Closing
Step 6: Generate significant FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
● Communicate that only a limited volume of product is available: This might not be applicable to all situations, but
use this as a FOMO factor wherever applicable. For example: while selling a CRM offering, this particular tactic
might not come as useful, however, while selling an EdTech product, this particular tactic works really well, where
you communicate to the learners that there are limited no. of seats in every cohort
● Provide a discount% that is valid only for a short duration: Discounting is a key scenario applicable in all sales
conversations. Ensure that you communicate to the customer that applicable discounts are only available for a
fixed period of time and post that a price hike is expected
● If a competitor of your prospect is a client, stress on the tangible benefits that the competitor has derived from
your product, however, do not disclose any sensitive information

Step 7: Closing- Assist the client in the payment/ contract signing activity

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Case Discussion II
Imagine that you are working for Razorpay, which is one of the leading players in the market that offers
payment gateway services to businesses. You are currently trying to convert a leading chain of
educational institutions which runs 5 schools and 12 colleges under its umbrella in different parts of the
country. Currently, the fee payment options available to the students are- Demand draft, Cheque, and
Cash Deposit. Imagine that you are reaching out to the Vice-Chancellor of the institution over an email
for the first time- Draft a favorable email for the situation. Let’s assume that the Vice-Chancellor agrees
to e-meet you over a 30 min Zoom session. How will you pitch your product to him?

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Case Discussion III
Assume that you are working as a BDA in a food delivery company. Your company has recently
launched a subscription product that allows customers to save on delivery charges. Let’s assume that
on average a customer pays Rs. 25 for delivery each time he/ she orders food. And the cost of the
subscription you are selling is Rs 250, which is valid for 3 months. You have access to the entire
customer base of the company and you have to call 50 customers today to sell your subscription
product. Design a framework to answer how you should select which 50 customers to call today? How
would you pitch your product to the customer? How would you communicate the quantitative value of
the subscription product to the customer?

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Case Discussion IV
Imagine that you have recently started a company that sells artisanal soda. You are in conversation with
a leading IT service provider that has 82 offices across India with combined workforce strength of 2.5
lakh employees. The pantry of the company currently offers traditional soda (PepsiCo products) to the
employees. There have been no demands from employees as such for any additional product. Keeping
that in mind, how would you pitch your product to the admin head of the company for entering into an
exclusive partnership with your brand? Remember that, it’s a situation where consumer need doesn’t
exist to switch to a new product. You will have to create the need and then push your product. Design
your pitch in accordance with that.

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Assignment
For the cases solved in the class, think of the key objections that might arrive from the customer. List down the
objections and provide solutions on how to handle each of them to convince the prospect in buying your product.

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In the next class we will study:
● Objection Handling
● Negotiation

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