What is a sales pitch audit?

A sales pitch audit is a structured review of the pitch your team currently gives, judged against what the buyer actually needs to hear in order to say yes. It covers the message, the proof, the structure, the objection handling and the close, and it produces a written assessment of where the pitch loses the room.

How long does a sales pitch audit take?

Most audits run over two to three weeks from the first session to the written assessment. Where a live pitch is already in the diary we have compressed that to a few days, so tell us the date and we will tell you what is achievable.

What do we have to give you before it starts?

The deck or the script you use today, a recording of the pitch being delivered if one exists, the last few opportunities you won and lost, and access to two or three people who deliver it. Nothing needs writing specially for us.

Who inside our business needs to be involved?

The people who actually give the pitch, plus whoever owns the message they are given. An audit that only reaches the sales team fixes delivery and leaves the underlying message untouched, which is usually where the problem sits.

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Sales pitch audit

Find out what your pitch is doing to the room.

A structured review of the pitch your team gives today, judged against what the buyer needs to hear before they can say yes.

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Definition

What a sales pitch audit is.

A sales pitch audit is a structured review of the pitch your team currently gives, measured against what the buying room actually needs to hear before it can commit. Somebody outside the business watches the pitch as your buyer would watch it, takes it apart across five dimensions and writes down what they found, so you get an honest read on where the pitch is winning attention and where it quietly loses it. The output is an assessment you can act on rather than an opinion you have to argue with.

What gets audited

Five dimensions.

Message. Whether the value you describe is the value the buyer is trying to buy, and whether a senior person could repeat it accurately afterwards.
Proof. Whether the evidence you offer answers the doubt the buyer actually holds, and whether it survives someone checking it.
Structure. The order in which the story lands, where attention peaks and where the room starts reading email.
Objection handling. What happens when the questions go sideways, including the objections nobody in the room says out loud.
Close. What you ask for, when you ask for it and whether the next step is one the buyer can realistically take.

What you receive

Something you can act on.

A written assessment. The five dimensions scored and explained, with the specific moments where the pitch works and where it costs you the room.
A rebuilt narrative. The story reordered around what the buyer needs, with the language your team can actually say aloud.
The objection map. The doubts your buyers carry into the room, with an answer for each that holds under pressure.
A working session. We take your team through the findings and rehearse the version that comes out of them.

Who it is for

B2B technology firms and consultancies selling to the C-suite.

The work suits companies whose deals are decided by a group of senior people rather than a single buyer, where the pitch has to carry technical substance and commercial argument at the same time. That covers enterprise technology vendors, professional services firms and consultancies whose growth depends on winning a small number of large decisions each year.

It suits teams who suspect the pitch is the constraint and want that tested properly, and teams who have watched a strong shortlist position turn into a loss without ever being told why. If your win rate has slipped while your pipeline stayed healthy, the pitch is usually where the answer is hiding.

How we run it

Four steps, run by people who have sat on both sides.

We watch the pitch. Live where possible, recorded where not, delivered by the people who normally give it rather than a polished version built for us.
We talk to your buyers. Where you can open the door we interview people who have recently bought from you or chosen somebody else, because their account of the pitch is the one that matters.
We take it apart. The five dimensions, assessed against what senior buyers are known to respond to and against what your competitors are putting in front of the same people.
We rebuild and rehearse. You get the assessment, the reordered narrative and a session where your team runs the new version and gets it into their own words.

The work is led by Dan Ilett, who interviewed CEOs as a Financial Times journalist before advising deal teams at IBM, Microsoft, Google and Cisco. Sales teams coached and equipped by The Proposition have gone on to close more than $1bn in new revenue.

Where this sits

Related work.

Sales pitch workshops take the audit findings into the room and coach the team who has to deliver them.
Enterprise bid review does the same job for a written bid before it goes to procurement.
The Safety Advantage explains why the option that feels safest wins, which is the frame the objection map is built on.
The four things the C-suite cares about sets out what senior buyers are listening for while you pitch.

Common questions

What people ask before they start.

What is a sales pitch audit?
A sales pitch audit is a structured review of the pitch your team currently gives, judged against what the buyer actually needs to hear in order to say yes. It covers the message, the proof, the structure, the objection handling and the close, and it produces a written assessment of where the pitch loses the room.
How long does a sales pitch audit take?
Most audits run over two to three weeks from the first session to the written assessment. Where a live pitch is already in the diary we have compressed that to a few days, so tell us the date and we will tell you what is achievable.
What do we have to give you before it starts?
The deck or the script you use today, a recording of the pitch being delivered if one exists, the last few opportunities you won and lost, and access to two or three people who deliver it. Nothing needs writing specially for us.
Who inside our business needs to be involved?
The people who actually give the pitch, plus whoever owns the message they are given. An audit that only reaches the sales team fixes delivery and leaves the underlying message untouched, which is usually where the problem sits.

Start here

Book a meeting.

Tell us what you are selling, who you are selling it to and when the next pitch lands. We will tell you inside thirty minutes whether an audit is the right thing for you and what it would involve.

Book a meeting → or send us a message.