6 sales pitch examples (and why they work)

Elevator pitch example

But closing a deal isn’t as easy as just building rapport (with both prospects and existing customers). You’ll need to use powerful action words, yet be cautious about how you come across.

Too salesy? It’ll put off your audience.

Too informal? Your prospects won’t feel the urgency to buy.

There’s a fine balance between being overly promotional and being too friendly with your prospects. Either could banish any chance of your prospects thinking, “Wow! I need to buy this today.”

Take a look at these six effective sales pitch examples for some tips on how to walk that line:

1. Phone call sales pitch example
2. Email sales pitch example
3. Voicemail sales pitch example
4. Presentation sales pitch example
5. Elevator pitch example
6. Follow-up sales pitch example

Selling products or services over the phone is one of the most popular forms of pitching to a potential client, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's the easiest.

This sales pitch is typically delivered when cold-calling your prospects. Since these people haven’t heard of your brand before, it can be tricky to grab their attention and build trust over the phone.

The success of your phone call sales pitch depends on your sales script. If you’re boring your potential customer with a long intro about your company, there’s a high chance they’ll simply hang up.

(Plus, with eight attempts to reach a cold call now considered average, you’ll want to keep prospects on the phone if they answer it.)

Lucky for you, this phone call sales pitch example can help grab your prospect’s attention instantly—and pique their interest about what you’re selling:

Salesperson: Hey Naomi. It’s Ian from Acme Company. How are you?

Prospect: I’m okay. What can I do for you Ian?

Salesperson: I noticed a number of your ads on Facebook and Twitter promoting X product, and felt you could really boost your conversions by making just a few small changes.

Prospect: Sorry, what do you guys do?

Salesperson: We work with eCommerce companies like Harry’s to manage their social media ad campaigns. In fact, after only one month of working with Harry’s, for every $1,000 they spend now, they get a 30% increase in conversions.

Prospect: [thinking]

Salesperson: I’d love to learn more about your ad campaigns, Naomi, and share ideas that've worked really well for us. Can we find a 15-minute window next week for a brief call?”

But what makes it so good?

Let’s look at the opening line.

Instead of opening with a generic “Have you got a few minutes to chat about our product?” the salesperson begins with a conversation to make sure the prospect is in the right frame of mind by asking how they are.

Then the salesperson explains how they met the person they’re calling: through their social media ads.

(Privacy concerns are big. Anticipating this and getting it out in the open can clear any “Sorry, how did you get my contact details?” questions that could restrict your flow of conversation.)

Once the salesperson has explained this, they have a quick back-and-forth about basic product details and how the service they’re selling could be beneficial.

Instead of waffling on (and potentially boring the prospect), they close the conversation by requesting a follow-up call within the next week. This works because:

• The prospect has time to set aside mental space to chat about the service being sold, rather than being caught off-guard.
• The salesperson can prepare for their call and do some research to further personalize the pitch.
• When they’ve had time to prepare, the prospect can digest information properly rather than listening to the salesperson talk.

Email sales pitches are delivered similarly to cold calls. The only difference? It’s sent via email rather than over the phone.

Although email pitches eliminate common problems that phone call pitches have, they still don’t guarantee results.

Why? The average person receives around 121 emails per day.

With so many messages hitting inboxes, you need to do something special to stand out and engage your prospect.

This email from Demandwell is an excellent sales pitch email example.

But why does it work so well?

Simply put, it’s digestible. Instead of sending a 1,000-word essay about the service she’s selling, Summer describes it in two short lines (the first two lines).

She gets right to the point, clearly explaining what her product does and the value it offers.

Summer also uses visuals in her cold pitch. The screenshot gives the recipient a glimpse into the product and its UI.

But our favorite part is the offer of lunch or coffee, on her. Who said that free coffee wasn’t an effective way for sales teams to make more sales?

Unfortunately, many sales reps spend the majority of their cold call time leaving voicemails.

(That could happen if you’re attempting to contact prospects at inconvenient times.)

But whether you’re calling at the wrong time or being ignored because you’re hiding your caller ID, you need an awesome voicemail sales pitch if you want to hear back from your prospective client.

Here's a voicemail sales pitch example from Sales Hacker:

Notice how their sales representative opens with a quick introduction. Don't make someone listen to a five-minute voicemail, only to find out who’s talking in the last 15 seconds. They probably won't make it all the way to the end of the voicemail anyway.

Their sales team also uses social proof to back up their work. Sharing specific success metrics helps build credibility and show value.

After you leave this type of voicemail, we recommend having your sales team send a follow-up email to encourage people to contact you that way. This can help phone-shy prospects learn more about the products you’re selling in a way that they're comfortable with.

Delivered on a slideshow and presented by a sales representative at your company, presentations are one of the most traditional forms of selling.

But it comes with its own challenges, and it’s not just technical problems you’ll have to prepare for when delivering a sales presentation. Whether it’s a private pitch to a single company or a presentation for an industry event, you need to grab your audience’s attention.

Take this sales deck example from GoSquared:

The cover slide not only shares their value proposition but also showcases valuable social proof with badges and reviews from credible tech review sites.

Bonus: visuals improve your sales presentations because they are processed 60,000 times faster than text. Also, storytelling is always a good way to improve your sales pitch.

In your sales pitch deck, include considering images of the founders. Allowing the audience to relate to the brand through names and faces lets the speaker explain the brand’s history in a fun way — oh, and in case you ever want to overload a presentation with numbers, 63% of event attendees remember stories, while only 5% remember statistics.

Think about the last time you were asked, “What do you do?” Chances are you were caught off-guard and struggled to string together a concise pitch that explains who you are, what you do, and your unique selling proposition.

The elevator pitch is a two-minute speech that should be up your sleeve—and ready to be delivered to anyone who asks.

Here's an example of a great elevator pitch from G2 Crowd.

And the kicker? It's only 21 seconds long.

Pretty impressive.

What we like most about this sales pitch example is the tone of voice. No jargon, plain English.

That’s key to perfecting your elevator pitch: not over-selling your product or sounding like the stereotypical sleazy salesperson.

Speaking of follow-ups, our final sales pitch example covers just that: the art of following up with a prospect who hasn’t returned your previous messages.

Did you know that it takes on average five attempts to close a sale? That’s a shocking statistic—especially when only 30% of salespeople push for more communication attempts after just one email.

Make it a top priority to follow up with prospective customers. Whether you spoke to them at an event, over the phone, or via email, you could get a head-start on your competition—just by being persistent.

This follow-up sales pitch example from Zendesk is a winner:

This smooths the path for the sender to prove they were interested in the previous conversation by briefly touching on a specific pain point, rather than of firing off a generic email.

This follow-up sales pitch is short and to-the-point, offering to answer questions without putting too much pressure.

Because it ends with a call to action that prompts a phone call, this follow-up email template gives you a much better shot at converting lukewarm leads into red-hot contacts.

As a sales rep, your pitch is your bread and butter—no matter what you’re selling (or who you’re pitching to)—which means you should definitely put some time and effort into perfecting your own.

The next time you’re writing a cold call script or perfecting your email template, try using a few elements in these sales script examples and see how you can improve the flow of your own sales pitch.