This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Way of the Wolf" by Jordan Belfort. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Do you want to know how to make a sales pitch step-by-step by using the Straight Line System? Do you want to sound like an expert and stop saying stupid stuff?
You might have an idea in your head about how to close a sale. But the most successful salespeople don’t leave anything to chance. They know how to make a sales pitch and work off of a script.
Follow the steps below to learn how to make a sales pitch.
How to Make a Sales Pitch Using the Straight Line System
You might have an idea in your head about how to close a sale. But the most successful salespeople don’t leave anything to chance. They know how to make a sales pitch and work off of a script.
Certain people simply have more charisma than others. Take the example of Bill Clinton again: He shook thousands of hands a day while running for office, but managed to connect on a personal level with each voter. Fortunately, even if you don’t possess any natural charisma, you can still connect with people—it’s a learnable skill, and you don’t even need to have that much to a know how to make a sales pitch. Having charisma has to do with all of the stuff that we’ve already talked about. It is about maintaining the right tone and the right body language at the right time, as well as not saying stupid stuff. This is actually the hardest for most people, and once stupid stuff starts coming out of people’s mouths, it is not likely to stop. This is novice behavior that the prospect picks up very quickly, ending any chance of a sale.
Experts, on the other hand, know how to make a sales pitch and sound smart. It’s sounding like an expert that gets you paid, and this is why you need a script. The Straight Line script is the perfect sale condensed into script. If it doesn’t work out after you follow this sales pitch script and maintain good tone and body language, pack up and move on without much consternation.
How to Make a Sales Pitch: Step-by-Step
Think about the three tens first introduced in Jordan Belfort’s Way of the Wolf.
- First, the product.
- Second, the salesperson (you).
- Third, the company behind the product.
The goal is to bring your prospect’s numbers closer to ten. Attempt to create certainty one by one in the same order that they were introduced.
Build logical cases first and emotional cases second. The logical case will satisfy the BS detector of the prospect, and then move on to the emotional, painting a picture of the prospect with the product. Do all of this using the scripts and language patterns you develop.
Step 1
- Introduce yourself and the product, explain the reason for the call, and establish yourself as an expert using tone and body language. Here are some basic patterns that are useful:
- Always be enthusiastic from the beginning.
- Speak in the familiar, no “Mr.” or “Ms.”
- Introduce yourself and the company right at the start, and then say the company’s name again in the first two or so sentences.
- Use “power words” or superlatives: “fastest,” “growing exponentially,” “explosive growth.”
- Ask for permission to start the rest of your sale, ask questions of the prospect.
Step 2
- Transition into the info-gathering phase. Ask a few big picture questions, like:
- “What do you like or dislike about your current situation or supplier?”
- “What’s your biggest frustration with similar services you’ve used in the past?”
- “What’s most important to you when looking for a product of this nature?”
- “Have I asked everything that you wanted to talk about or that’s important?”
Step 3
- Transition to the main part of the presentation. Follow this roadmap:
- The first words in the main part of the presentation should be the exact name of whatever you’re selling.
- Next, focus on benefits—whatever the client needs. This part of the script shouldn’t be more than a couple paragraphs at most.
- Stop for a check-in: “All of that make sense?”
- Repeat the prior two bullets once or twice more with different benefits, but not too many times—don’t overwhelm the prospect.
- Create some urgency—make it clear why the prospect should buy now. Use some tonal scarcity, or the idea of lowering your voice and putting power behind it, here.
- Move to the close: Explain how easy the buying process is and how fast you can start.
- Ask directly for the order now, and finish with, “Sound fair enough?”
Now that you know how to make a sales pitch, you need to train and drill to get totally up to speed. You need to know your script by heart.
The important thing here is to become like an actor and a writer—be good at reading a script without sounding like you’re reading one and be good at writing a pitch script that you’re able to deliver naturally.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Jordan Belfort's "Way of the Wolf" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full Way of the Wolf summary :
- How to sell like Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street
- The 4 steps of the Straight Line selling method
- The 3 types of certainty you have to create to make a successful sale
