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Ditch the Pitch: The Art of Improvised Persuasion - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Ditch the Pitch: The Art of Improvised Persuasion

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In today’s world, customers don’t want to hear sales pitches, but so many salespeople still rely on them. In his breakthrough handbook, Ditch the Pitch, Steve Yastrow, founder of a successful business strategy consulting firm, asks us to throw out everything we've been taught about pitching to customers. Steve’s advice: tear up your sales pitch and instead improvise persuasive conversations.Ditch the Pitch is an essential read for salespeople, business managers, and anyone wishing to persuade those around them. Organized into six habits, with each habit consisting of three practices necessary for mastery, Ditch the Pitch is designed to teach Yastrow's approach to fresh, spontaneous, persuasive conversations. These new skills will show the reader how to identify the details that make each customer unique and subsequently navigate a conversation that focuses on the right message for the right customer at the right time.Throughout the book, the author quotes well-known improv comedians and musicians. He translates the techniques these artists use when improvising to create persuasive situations with customers. With the new confidence Ditch the Pitch offers, you will become master of the art of on-the-spot, engaging, and effective customer interactions. Let go of pre-written scripts and embrace Yastrow's guidelines for effortlessly enabling spontaneous conversations that persuade customers to say "yes."

ISBN-13: 9781590794654

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: SelectBooks

Publication Date: 02-20-2018

Pages: 176

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

Age Range: 18 Years

Steve Yastrow is a non-stop idea generator, business advisor and author. When he’s not creating new ideas for his books and other writings, he’s thinking about how to apply his ideas to his clients’ businesses.In 1997 Steve opted-out of a career as a senior marketing executive in the hospitality industry to form Yastrow and Company. Yastrow and Company has enabled Steve to help organizations of all types improve their results through his breakthrough marketing, customer relationship and sales ideas.Steve Yastrow is the author of three books, Ditch the Pitch, We: The Ideal Customer Relationship and Brand Harmony. Management guru Tom Peters says, “When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention.” Peters called Brand Harmony “compelling and powerful,” while describing We as “a superb book.”As an author, Steve excels at identifying the things that truly matter in business, dissecting trends and blending his observations with philosophy and science. He identifies the questions that are crucial to business success and helps his readers answer those questions for their own businesses.

Table of Contents

Part I Why Ditch the Pitch 1

1 The End of the Sales Pitch 3

But I'm Not a Salesperson 4

Detecting the Pitch 5

We All Have "Customers" 6

Why Pitches Don't Work 6

2 Replace Sales Pitches with Persuasive Conversations 11

Earning the Right to be Heard 13

Good Persuasive Conversations Are Diagnostic 18

Improvisation: The Key to Creating Authentic Persuasive Conversations 20

3 Improvisation Creates Persuasive Conversations 21

Humans Were Born to Improvise 22

What is Improvisation? 29

Part II The Ditch the Pitch Habits 31

4 Figure Out What's Going On 35

How to Start a Persuasive Conversation 35

Habit #1 Think Input Before Output 37

Practice: Be Alert 38

Practice: Say Less to Notice More 43

Practice: Turn Down Your Analytic Brain 47

Habit #2 Size Up The Scene 53

Practice: Know Who You Are With 55

Practice: Understand the Context of Your Conversation 60

Practice: Listen for the Game 65

5 Go with the Flow 67

How to Propel a Persuasive Conversation Forward 67

Habit #3 Create a Series of "Yeses" 69

Practice: Say "Yes, and…" 70

Practice: Work with What You Are Given 75

Practice: Ensure Your Customer Keeps Saying Yes 80

Habit #4 Explore and Heighten 83

Practice: Find Your Customer's Path 86

Practice: Get Rid of Your But 91

Practice: Make Accidents Work 92

6 Let a Shared Story Emerge Through Your Conversation 97

How to Create a Shared Story 97

Habit #5 Focus the Conversation on Your Customer 101

Practice: Make 95% of the Conversation about Your Customer 103

Practice: Obey the One-Paragraph Rule 106

Practice: Weave Your Stories Together 110

Habit #6 Don't Rush the Story 113

Practice: Don't Load the Slingshot 116

Practice: Leave Things in Your Pocket 118

Practice: Create Callbacks 119

Part III Putting Ditch the Pitch to Work 127

7 The Dimmer Switch 129

One Habit at a Time 129

Staying Fresh 133

8 The Relationship Conversations: "Let's talk about us." 135

Leading Your Customer to the Brink of the Relationship 136

Relationship Conversations in Non-Sales Situations 139

9 The Persuasion Ensemble: Selling Together 141

Try Not to Top the Other Person 143

Shared Understanding of the Principles 144

Give and Take Focus 144

10 Ditch the Pitch to Brainstorm Ideas 147

11 Go Ahead. Ditch the Pitch 149

Acknowledgments 151

Endnotes 153

Index 155

About the Author 163