Whether you realize it or not, if you work for a startup, you are involved in sales (I know, you can stick your finger in your mouth right now and say yuck! I apologize for all my sales friends, but it is not one of my strong suits, or so I thought) in some way, shape or form. Now it may not be in the traditional sales sense that you might be thinking, I mean unless your startup is selling enterprise software or some service, chances are the only thing you are selling are ads (and isn’t that what Google AdSense or <insert ad network name here> is for?)

So then you ask, how can I possibly be involved in sales and have a sales pitch? Easy, if you are like me and attend a social event or two here and there in your local tech community or even attend a conference, chances are you are delivering a sales pitch and you do not even realize it. I know you all have been in this scenario: You are at an event, you meet someone new, they look at your name tag and say, “oh you work for <insert company name here>”, and they say I think I have heard of that, what is it exactly that you do? Here is where you deliver your sales pitch, so I hope you have rehearsed it time and time again and deliver it flawlessly.

The key to a good sales pitch is to have a well articulated, well defined value proposition that everyone in the company understands and can speak to. If half of your employees think the value proposition is one thing and the other half think it is something else, you have problems my friend. Every employee should be able to (whether they want to or feel comfortable doing it in a social setting) articulate what your value proposition is. Because everyone is different (that is what makes us unique) the delivery or “sales pitch” will most likely vary (greatly depending on what type of person they are and what function they perform within the company), but the spirit of the pitch should be the same.

So the next time you find yourself out and about, at a conference or other industry event, and someone asks what your company does, take a deep breath, put on your sales hat, and sell the hell out of your company!