Selling or Pitching

Whenever we talk about marketing related activities, we consider sales, branding & promotion, advertising, Customer relationship, marketing research and other assortments of marketing, but we rarely consider one of the most important thing, which can be a differentiating factor for a company, and that is "Pitching".

 Although sales is closely related with pitch, but there is very fundamental difference between both. While former talks about repetitive convincing and persuading customer to buy your product or service, the latter focus on one time shot to hit the target.


Low status selling and high status pitching..!!

Low status Selling:

• Customer is the king. 
• Customer is the prize which you want to win and will do whatever customer expects from you.
• You take terms from customers and follow their order rather than making a win win situation.
• Selling is bending in front of customer to sell your product.

High status Pitching:

• Customer is not the king.
• Establish yourself as the prize for customers, the prize which customers want to win.
• You dictate your terms also instead of just accepting customers'.
• Pitching is standing tall in front of customer to sell your product.

Let us understand this concept more clearly by taking an example.

Suppose you are sales Representative of company X, selling sapphire glass to a mobile manufacturing company Y and your product is unique of its kind, better than competitors, priced at $10/ square inch.



You are making presentation for the mobile manufacturing company and you start by saying, thank you for allowing us to present our product to you. We hope that our product will stand on your expectations and we really look forward to have you as our customer.
In this case, you are clearly taking a low status position for selling your product.
As a result, although company Y is willing to buy your product, but will do so at $8/ square inch.

Now take the same situation, sales Representative of company X pitching same product to company Y, and starts his presentation by mentioning that, product is unique of its kind and due to high demand, company X is not able to meet the demand. We would like to have customers who understand business style of our company and has their principles aligning with ours. 

Here, he had established his product and company as the prize which customer want to win.

As a result, you are able to sell your product at the price you want to give, which is $10/square inch.

What is the idea of Pitching

People want that thing which is scarce in nature.
The things which move away from them, they chase those things rather than those which are readily available.

Neuroeconomics and pitching

Neuroeconomics is neuroscience integrated with economic activities of people, and according to that, there are three broad parts of brain decision making, which is important to understand for making pitch.

1. Reptilian: instinct (survival, breathing/swallowing/heartbeat, startle response)
2. Limbic: emotion ( feelings, relationship/nurturing, images and dreams, play)
3. Neocortex: thought (including planning, language, logic & will, awareness)

Decision process of any buyer starts from reptilian brain, goes to limbic brain and finally ends up at neocortex brain.

Passing through reptilian brain is the most difficult part and most significant also, because initial decision to purchase is done at this part only. It passes information to limbic brain only if it finds it unique or threatened by that information and requires processing of limbic and neocortex brain.
If your information is not different or unique or just normal for reptilian brain, it will simply ignore the message as it doesn't require processing from limbic brain on that waste information.

Limbic brain considers the information passed by reptilian and try to analyze its social relevance, by finding its links with any known and trustworthy source. Here brand plays a role. Once the information is passed by this part to neocortex, it analyzes all the minutest details about that information before taking any decision.

Thus, for pitching passing your information through the gate of reptilian brain is most important and that is done by taking high status position and not by low status.


Is pitching always necessary and more beneficiary over sales?

Although pitching has many advantages, but it can not be generalized that it is better or worse than sales. It all depends on your ability, your company's ability and your customer, and most importantly the industry in which your company is playing.

So, decide yourself, selling or pitching.