One of the most powerful and under-rated tools is feedback from prospects and in particular the questions that they ask you.

One is Many

For every customer that asks you a question, there will doubtless be tens more that didn’t ask the question and then didn’t use your service. No matter how seemingly stupid the question is it can be valuable.

Complex

Most sales are not that straight forward. There is often an element of back and forth with the client about what they want and what you can offer. This can be a time consuming process, and as if I haven’t said it enough, time is money. Anything you can do to pre-emptively answer questions will help you to get the sale. I would make a PDF with these questions that you can attach during a pitch and perhaps also have them on your website.

Refine, Refine, Refine

Your sales material should constantly be refined and changed to suit whomever you are prospecting. This can be an extremely time consuming task and you may not have the skillset to do this yourself. I would recommend free online software Canva for this. It allows you to very easily and quickly produce something that looks semi-professional. (at least on a par with most templates that come with the likes of powerpoint and such) This way you can very quickly chop and change to suit your needs without needing access to special software.

Competition

If you are particularly lucky, then the client might give you feedback as to who is their current supplier. This can be really useful to have a look, see what they are doing differently, see how they are pitching themselves and compare to your own approach.

Control

Remember with any sales pitch there is more out of your control then there is within your control. You have no control over your clients budget, how they feel about your service, whether they like your business card etc…Repetition and refinery are the tools needed to make your sales conversion rates sore.