Appreciation post: A guy at the Eastern Market meetup told me my pitch was all wrong

Honestly, I went to that networking thing at Eastern Market last month thinking I was ready. I had my 30 second pitch down, all about my web design services. After I gave it to this guy who runs a few local shops, he just looked at me and said, 'Tbh, I don't care what you do. I care if you can fix my problem. My site loads slow on phones and I'm losing sales. Can you fix that?' It hit me hard. I was just listing features. So I changed my whole approach. Now I start by asking about their biggest headache with their online stuff. My first question is always, 'What's the one thing about your website that keeps you up at night?' I've booked three solid meetings in Detroit in the last two weeks just by leading with that. Has anyone else had to totally rework how they talk about what they do at these events?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey39321h ago

My buddy had a similar wake up call selling accounting software. He used to list all the features until a potential client cut him off to ask if it could handle their specific payroll mess. That shift from selling a tool to solving a problem is everything.

dakotacraig20h ago

Exactly, @casey393. I learned to ask about their problem first.