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You've got the opportunity you've been waiting for, the meeting with a decision maker, and you know you need to impress to have a chance of getting any sort of deal out of it.

Question is can you impress?

Now its the difficult part - the sales pitch - the part where if you don't grab the attention you will have a miserable time on your hands. Luckily we have 6 steps for you to take going into any sales pitch.

#1 Research

This should be second nature, a hunger to know more than the obvious. Dig deeper and learn names and faces before you have even met anyone, this may be borderline stalkerish but you have prepped for your exam and have left no leaf unturned.

Know the company, if it’s a public company there is not a single excuse that you can use to get away with not know everything about a companies financials, future plans and number of staff. If anything these details will be able to give you a new angle if it’s going down the pan, highlight any possible problems you feel could arise with future plans and solve the problem before it event appears.

#2 Preparation

From time to time the trusty projector will break, laptop won’t be charged, you will forget a metric.

Preparation is vital, have a backup of everything such as batteries and notes, ensure you know every fact and figure that you need to know as on the spot calulations will help to further grow the relationship and make the audience remember you for being so sharp.

#3 Confidence

Again no fireworks or shaken not stirred lines when you enter the building. Have confidence; really why wouldn’t you this is your company and your product, you have arrived to represent but more importantly someone is willing to listen to your genius pitch.

Confidence comes across as you know what you are talking about (awesome preparation will do that to you) so educating will be the easy part. Don’t have the attitude of being a gift to the world but focus on what you there to do, pitch the idea and chances are you will radiate a confidence and excitement of your product.

#4 Delivering the Goods

Delivering the pitch is now vital to get the deal, make sure the people opposite you are interested. The best thing to remember and always do is keep it real, don’t bloat numbers or possibilities, deliver the solid facts and concrete evidence, if they like the idea then pick out the possibilities as chances are they will be doing that for themselves anyway.

#5 Getting to the Point

A pitch can be a difficult situation, if the person you are set to pitch to is busy, they will have little time and probably have very little care allocated for you.

One of the biggest time wasters is the story telling process, sometimes the build up can be the factor that destroys the entire pitch so ideally you should avoid these and stick to hard facts. The problem with story telling,in business, is that it's closely associated with someone that doesn't know many of the solid facts and figure therefore it's a deterrent more then anything.

It’s very common for people to fall in love with an idea and cancel all meetings for the rest of the day, this is where the research and preparation will do you wonders as the ‘keywords’ will set alarm bells with the party listening.

#6 Always Follow Up

Even if the idea was hated, follow it up as something could have changed over the day or night. One thing to take away from the pitch event is the opportunity to grow your network, people who have high roles within the company may be present, so take the chance to get contact details for them and at a later date ensure they have a refresher of your company name.

Make sure you have taken big strides in stages of your company before contact like this is made.

These are the basics to an brilliant pitch delivery, the most important thing to take away from this the vital area of preparation and everything else will generally become the least of your worries.

By: John Perrin