Improve Your Customer Journey Before Your Sales Pitch

I walked into a car dealership with my mind made up. The model, the spec, the test drive, all done. The only thing I hadn’t decided was the colour.

Nobody needed to pitch me anything. They lost the sale anyway.

When sales slow down, most businesses start with the pitch. Better words, a sharper presentation, more training for the team. But if you want to improve your customer journey, that showroom is the best place I know to start, because it shows what happens when the pitch never gets a chance.

What happened in the showroom?

I stood in the middle of the showroom. The salespeople were gathered round the coffee machine, chatting. Every so often one of them would catch my eye. Nobody came over.

So I waited, to see what would happen. Nothing did.

As I was leaving, somebody finally asked if I needed any help. I said I’d come in to buy a car and nobody had offered any. They said sorry. And that was it.

I went to another dealership and bought it there. They welcomed me the moment I walked through the door.

The first dealership didn’t lose that sale on price, or on the car, or on the pitch. Every hard part was already done. All anybody had to do was walk over.

Why doesn’t a better sales pitch fix lost sales?

Because the pitch is only one part of how a customer decides, and it’s the smallest part.

Only 25% of sales is selling. The rest is giving customers a reason to choose you. Your culture, how customers move through your business, and why they’d pick you over your competitors. Get those right and the selling’s the easy bit.

A great pitch can’t rescue a customer who never got to hear it. Most customers who walk away don’t leave during the pitch. They leave before it, in the gaps nobody is watching, and they never tell you why. Those gaps are the five places most businesses lose sales without realising.

What is a customer journey?

It’s every moment a customer has with your business, from the first time they hear your name to the next time they come back. The website, the first phone call, the wait for a reply, the quote, the day the work starts, the check in after it’s finished.

Every one of those moments is a touchpoint, and the customer leaves each one a little more certain about you or a little less. Your customers move through that journey whether or not anyone designed it. The only question is whether it was built on purpose or left to chance.

Where this fits in From Prospects to Profits

The From Prospects to Profits framework maps that journey in five stages: Perception, Experience, Purchase, Execution and Retention. The pitch belongs to Purchase. The showroom lost me in Experience, the stage where a customer finds out how easy you are to deal with. It never got as far as Purchase.

I’m Dave Edward, and in 40 years of sales I’ve seen this far more often than a bad pitch. Businesses put their effort into the moment of the sale and leave the moments around it to chance. It’s one of the main reasons businesses lose saleswithout knowing it.

How do you improve your customer journey?

Five places to start. None of them need a new pitch.

1. Walk through it as a customer

Ring your own number. Send an enquiry from a personal email. Look at your website on your phone. Write down every moment you had to wait, guess or ask twice.

2. Give every first contact an owner

It isn’t always a coffee machine. Sometimes it’s an inbox nobody owns, or a phone that rings out while everyone’s in a meeting. Decide who answers what, and by when, so nobody is left standing on their own.

3. Make sure customers only have to tell you once

At Ikan in Nusa Dua, the person who showed us to our table introduced themselves and asked our names. A few minutes later, our waiter came over and spoke to us using them. Nobody had to ask twice.

Most businesses do the opposite. The customer tells the first person who they are and what they need, then tells the next person, then the next. Every time they repeat themselves, they feel a little less like they matter.

4. Tell people what happens next

At every step, the customer should know what comes next, when, and who it’s coming from. Not knowing what happens next makes people hesitate more than the price does, and it’s a big part of the confidence gap that stops businesses charging what they’re worth.

5. Look at why customers leave, not just why they come in

Most businesses put a lot of effort into the reasons customers come in. Very few look at the reasons customers leave. Ring three people who didn’t buy and ask what they chose instead, and why.

What changes when the journey is right?

Fewer enquiries go quiet. More of the customers who were already ready to buy actually do. Your team stops relying on the pitch to rescue sales that were lost three steps earlier, and customers start telling people how easy you were to deal with.

The second dealership didn’t win me with a better pitch. They won me at the door.

So before you work on what your team says, improve your customer journey. Work on what your customers go through to get to that conversation.

Customers don’t remember your pitch. They remember whether anybody walked over.

Find out where customers are slipping away

The What Makes Customers Buy diagnostic scores your business on the five things a customer has to be sure about before they choose you. It takes about three minutes, you get your results straight away, and there is no call attached.

Take the What Makes Customers Buy diagnostic →

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between a customer journey and a sales funnel?

A sales funnel describes the path from the business’s side: leads in, sales out. A customer journey describes the same path from the customer’s side, every moment they have with you and how each one makes them feel. The funnel tells you how many customers you lost. The journey tells you why.

How do I find where my customer journey is losing sales?

Walk through it yourself as a customer, then ask recent customers what nearly stopped them. The answers usually point to one stage, and that’s where the hidden friction is worth fixing first.

Why Your Customer Journey Matters More Than Your Sales Pitch