A salesman explains why most pitches fail: you're talking to the wrong person. Dan Peña says 95% of sales attempts target prospects without decision-making authority or real need. Qualify first, then tailor your pitch to what they actually value.
One of the best ways to sell to someone is to find out what's most important to them, and then when they tell you, you link and change your pitch to meet their highest values. You can't do that on a cold call. You need to get in there and get conversing. But as soon as you can, you say, hey, look, what's most important to you in X? And then the answer that they give you will naturally be their highest values, and then you link your pitch to that.
I interviewed Dan Peña, and he said 95% of sales are attempted on the wrong people that can't make a decision or really don't have a need. But if you determine that he's a true prospect because he really has a need,
