post by Stephanie Nelson
Outside of grammar and punctuation errors, I have few pet peeves bigger than some of the ways salespeople hit you with their pitches. Not every outlet is appropriate for you to be hitting business people up. If you’re in sales, here are a few things to consider when you’re reaching out.
- Do you know the business as a client or the business owner on a personal level?
If you do not have a relationship with the person you’re speaking to, develop one before you hit them with the “buy my shiz” line. - Is this the first time you’re talking to the person you want to pitch?
If the answer is yes, use the call/email/message to ask about their business. You may find out pretty quickly that the “buy my shiz” line is a waste of everyone’s time. I actually had someone include their pitch IN THEIR LINKEDIN CONNECTION REQUEST! Yeah. No sir. I can already tell you’re not a good fit for my business if that’s the way you wanna go about getting to me. - Are you reaching out to the person you’re speaking with on a personal outlet?
I’ma dare one more person I don’t know to reach out to me on my personal cell phone number or my personal Facebook messenger account with a sales pitch. That IMMEDIATELY gets you blocked on my end. Business people have business phone lines, business email addresses, and other ways to reach them associated with the business for a reason. Respect that and let them have some semblance of separation between their business lives and personal lives. That’s especially true when they work for themselves and by themselves – a lot of their equipment is shared between business and personal and the line is blurred enough already.
What are some of your sales pitch pet peeves? Are there some that set you off more than others?
