Expert's Panel

A collection of timely and important topics posed to our panel of experts.

What are the essential components of the "pitch pak" (salesperson's package)?

 (ep101)
1. It contains anything you can provide sales that will help the sale close, initiate a sale, sustain a sales process or grow a new business. That is a pretty generic statement but let me give you an example. A lot of people think if you have a brochure and a data sheet that is all you need. In today’s business, particularly when you are dealing with facilities related products, you may want to personalize them to the customer. It may be by company or a certain type of application.

   Find yourself a handful of really good salespeople in your company. Go talk to them, tell them you are putting together the pitch pak and find out what they need. Your goal is to take all of the knowledge of product marketing and convey it to them in a way that is quickly accessible. Ask yourself what are the best tools that I can give them that will make their job easier and keep you off of an airplane.

2. What I think it should contain is: a capabilities brochure, data sheets, applications notes, reprints of positive product articles. Two alternative things are recent press releases and your annual report. The people your account manager calls upon want to see different things. The process engineer doesn’t care about your capabilities brochure or press releases or your annual report. But he or she is most interested in application notes and data sheets. The purchasing manager and senior management are very interested in knowing about you as a company and your annual report. They want to see if you are making a profit and that you are going to be around.

   A capabilities brochure is printed on very thick, glossy, expensive paper. On the first page there is always a picture of your Chairman and CEO looking at the camera and smiling. There is always a copy of their signature or chop somewhere on the first two pages. It tells how wonderful a company and world-wide you are, how you are trustworthy and the customer never has to worry about doing business with you

3. I would add that the salesperson’s laptop should be able to link into a website that would allow he or she to make a presentation with uniquely accessible points for the customer.