Do you remember the last time you got feedback from a sales meeting that had some room for improvement? For most of us, it’s not easy to recall this type of feedback as it’s hardly ever given.

But, you could read it from their eyes and gestures. Rather, non-gestures – nobody was paying attention to your pitch. They were stonewalling you. You paused for a bit and waited for a question to pop up: No response. Nothing came of out of that meeting, except mutual social awkwardness.

We tend to remember these times very vividly. After all, our brains are hardwired for negativity. We have a tendency to dwell on these events.

Is there a way to completely avoid having a meeting like this again? Probably no, but you can decrease the likelihood of having bad sales meetings to a great extent. To bridge this gap, you need to structure your pitch in the right way. Whether you’re doing B2B or B2C, face-to-face sales or online marketing, these principles can be applied to all situations where a potential buyer is considering a purchase.

Yet, it’s not quite what you might think! Your potential clients should feel both fascinated and puzzled during the meeting, even a little bit scared and excited. What’s the recipe for creating that kind of tension and intrigue?

Leave Your Best Ideas to the End

If you start the presentation with any of your best features, statistics, testimonials or case studies, you will surely get people’s attention. Yet, your presentation will be over as soon as it started. There’s not much left to build interest and excitement this way.

Instead of firing it all out in the beginning, you should move the great stuff to the end. Presenting brilliant insight is good, but having the right structure to do so is even better.

Setup Your Presentation With What Matters in the Industry

In any meeting, you’ve got about 20 minutes of real attention from your potential client. To keep them with you during the whole 20 minutes, start by describing what’s changing in the industry. Explain why those changes are causing big problems. Information doesn’t sell, domain expertise does. Show them how familiar you are with their problem.

If you do this, your status as an expert will rise in the eyes of your customers in no time. Having a high status is essential in sales!

Build Excitement Right Until the Big Reveal at the End

If your setup was done the right way, your customers want to figure out what’s the solution you’re proposing. Start building towards the big reveal which is how your product solves the problem with great certainty. Keep discussing the problem and your understanding of the different aspects of it. Use simple analogies and prove your expertise in finding answers to the right questions around the problem.

Suddenly, the stakes are high for the customer too: they’re thinking should we move forward with working together. Structuring your pitch this way is going to change everything for you in sales.

Are you going to do it?