The daily pitch

[Infohrm]

Think about all the times in your daily work that you are required to sell or market your organisation – yes, there’s formal marketing campaigns and new business proposals, but what about conducting interviews to ensure you attract the best candidate? Or walking into a client meeting to be faced with a senior executive you’ve [...]

Think about all the times in your daily work that you are required to sell or market your organisation – yes, there’s formal marketing campaigns and new business proposals, but what about conducting interviews to ensure you attract the best candidate? Or walking into a client meeting to be faced with a senior executive you’ve never met? Or bumping into an old friend on the way home and they ask who you’re working for now?

In all these instances, your employer will be relying on you to sell, sell, sell! But how many of us have the skills to “close the sale” in our daily interactions? More importantly, are we motivated to sell?

Firstly, the skills. Based on the examples above, all organisations need people with marketing skills outside of the sales/marketing team. Including this requirement in all job descriptions may not be the answer; but during induction or performance reviews, we need to be discussing the planned and unplanned sales opportunities employees may face. Employees should feel comfortable, confident and prepared to present their organisation in the best way to any audience. Formal sales training can be costly so an inhouse session by your finest sales/marketing guru may help to ensure every employee knows they have a “positive marketing” responsibility and the basic skills to achieve this.

Secondly, the motivation. Engaged employees will be your best salespeople. They will be the first to tell a friend to apply for a vacancy, and the most likely to demonstrate enthusiasm in a formal or informal setting. What is the sign you see in many restaurants – “if you enjoyed your experience, tell your friends; if you didn’t enjoy it, tell us”. This can apply to employees too. It’s fantastic for employees to share their positive work experiences with colleagues and friends or family outside of work. Of course there will be conversations about the bad days too, but if the employee feels that they can speak openly with their manager or any other staff member, you minimise the risk of all their conversations equating to a bad sales pitch.

If you do stop and think about all the times in your daily work that you are required to sell or market your organisation, better not forget your business and social online networks – there’s a whole other world of unplanned sales opportunities going on there!



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