How to plan a great pitch to a potential partner

Are you facing a crucial business proposal? Here's a way to make sure you have the issues covered.
Sales Hacker: The JUICY formula for a B2B business partnership pitch by Belinda Aramide, 2202-11-7

Tired of Rejection? Make Sure Your Offer is JUICY

Continue reading at https://www.saleshacker.com/juicy-offers/ | Sales Hacker

1. Justify their investment of time, money, and/or foregone revenue for even exploring the partnership.
   
   1. Recognize their operational costs of working with you... displacing a cash customer? supervision? recruitment?
   2. What will the first (pitch) meeting accomplish?
      1. Will you show them how they can profit or grow?
      2. Will you show them how you'll help with unexpected hurdles and expenses?
2. Show Unique advantage of doing this proposal with us instead of anything/anyone else.
   1. Ask ourselves: with whom are we competing?
   2. How can we uniquely help with the needs of their members and partners? Do we reduce the time and money they would have to invest in training? Can we demonstrate that? Can we help them innovate their own business? Can we make them confident it would help?
   3. What is unique about us?
   4. What makes us different?
   5. Are they hearing promises they've heard before?
3. Be Irresistible
   
   1. How can we help them 'seize the day'?
   2. Identify with them
      
      1. What's pressuring them? Profitability or growth?
      2. How will we make a difference sooner rather than later... to avoid getting a 'we'd love to have you ONE DAY ' answer.
      3. How can we avoid adding to their costs? (Get them to tell US.)
      4. "Is there anything we could help you fix RIGHT NOW?"
4. Consequential
   1. Being important: "We can make a BIG difference in your creativity & effectiveness NOW."
   2. Success stories from people who have worked with us?
   3. We need to communicate what a BIG impact we can make.
5. YES, that's an easy offer to accept!
   1. Make the offer easy to accept by offering alternatives. "We could do it Xway or Yway."
   2. Don't let saying NO be easier. See THEIR challenges, i.e.
      
      1. "Jeez we have to juggle our schedule"
      2. We have to convince the finance guy to forego potential revenue... it's just not worth it."
      3. Try and find out what their 'utilization rate' is. What are we up against?

 

Engaging Subscribers with Surveys

Surveys are often too dry and seem meaningless. The Financial Times achieved a phenomenal result by focusing first on the experience of being surveyed. Here are the steps they took. (Note this was a survey of email newsletter subscribers, not all subscribers.)

Step 1: Make it easy AND relevant. They placed a feedback link at the end of all the newsletters, asking the reader how satisfied they were.

Step 2: Offer a meaningful reward. They staged a rolling drawing for $100 credit toward book purchases on their site. Gift cards would probably work as well.

Step 3: Start with easy questions. The first few questions simply asked readers to rate satisfaction on a 5-point scale.

Step 4: Open things up. The first open-ended question was "How can we improve?"

Step 5: Let them rate some options. The Financial Times presented some ideas for improving the newsletter, requesting a response to the ideas.

Be fun, sincere, easy but open. They were delighted with some extended suggestions they received. Click the link below to find out what they learned and how it will change their strategy.

Inbox Collective: How The Financial Times Got More Than 78,000 Replies To A Survey, 2022-Oct-19 by Sarah Ebner and Michael Hoole

First, we created a one-click feedback mechanism that was actually embedded into the bottom of the newsletter, providing an opportunity for our readers to give feedback at the point where they finished reading. [Emphasis added.]