The pitch book is not dead

My first sales job was at Xerox. Though I have undergone sales training in other organizations, and have evaluated the sales training and enablement activities at a good many more, Xerox sales training is still the gold standard by which I compare other. Of the perquisites a Xerox-trained rep was required to have (“optional” was not in the Xerox lexicon) a pitch book was high on the list.

For the unfamiliar, a pitch book is a physical sales aid used to help customers understand a product or offering. It is typically a set of pages or sheets that can be conveniently flipped through to tell a story. The device originated in investment banking, enabling detailed information about an investment deal to be logically, systematically and professionally presented to a potential investor. It was adapted by other industries to as a way to help sales people present products to buyers – typically at the buyer’s office (advertisers, graphic designers and models use the term “portfolio” rather than pitch book).

Though no two pitch books at Xerox were alike (we each crafted our own) they shared common elements: slides depicting solutions to copying problems, data sheets, examples of what could be copied and what it could be copied onto (e.g. remember transparencies?), pricing and glowing customer references.

The good news: it worked. The bad news: you were limited to the content you could squeeze into a pitch book, and often found yourself flipping hurriedly through the book to get to the parts your buyer wanted to see. As product offerings have become more complex, and websites have improved, the pitch book has faded into the background.

Until now.

Tablets to the rescue.

Corporate Visions conducted research on the use of tablets as reported in eMarketer. Of the B2B companies surveyed, over 60% use tablets for live sales presentations and demos. Vastly more content is available through a tablet, there is not flipping of pages and, unlike a pitch book, tablets offer both the advantage of providing animation through videos, and enabling the customized results by incorporating the buyer’s actual and “what if” data to be tested.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find “how to” guides on how to construct a tablet version of a pitch book. Your best bet is the person or firm who builds and manages your website.

Written by Michael

Michael Douglas has held senior positions in sales, marketing and general management since 1980, and spent 20 years at Sun Microsystems, most recently as VP, Global Marketing. His experience includes start-ups, mid-market and enterprises. He's currently VP Enterprise Go-to-Market for NVIDIA.