Pitching Too Soon Is Killing Your Close Rate

Matthew Earle
Jun 5
4 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Why Early Pitching Fails in Tech Sales

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The Impact on Close Rates

84% of executives perceive premature pitches as "vendor-centric" hurting trust. Corporate Visions

Why Early Pitching Fails in Tech Sales

If your sellers are jumping into demos or product pitches before fully diagnosing the problem, they’re not accelerating the sale, they’re undermining it. Sales pitch timing is more important than ever before, however many sales leaders and businesses see "pitching" as successful end goal in itself.

If this sounds like one of the B2B sales mistakes your company makes, and you want a close rate improvement then read on.

It feels efficient. It sounds slick. But it kills close rates by introducing sales conversion problems later in the cycle.

Why sales pitches fail?

Because buyers don’t buy solutions they don’t feel they need. And if you haven’t surfaced the pain (the real, critical pain, that flows across the business) then there’s no urgency, no consensus, and no reason to act. These B2B discovery call mistakes are commonplace and I see them being repeated in every sales organisation I work with.

“Selling before discovery is like prescribing surgery before asking what hurts.” - Matt Earle (The Selling Collective)....probably

What Happens When You Introduce Your Solution Too Soon

When your team prematurely introduces the solution, and start talking features and benefits without first uncovering what’s broken, here’s what happens:

The buyer nods politely, but emotionally disengages.
They don’t feel heard. They feel sold to.
They leave the call thinking: “Nice product, but not a priority.”
You chase them for weeks, wondering why they've gone quiet.

The worst part? Your team leaves the call thinking it went well.

Premature product pitches reduce close rates from 40% to 20% in complex IT sales. Sales Benchmark Index

The Psychological Trap of Pitching Too Soon

Here’s the myth that premature sales pitch timing sells to your team:

“The buyer was engaged… they liked the demo… we had a great chat.” A Seller Thats Introduced The Solution Too Soon

What the buyer was really thinking:

You solved a problem we hadn’t confirmed, you hadn’t validated it, and no one had quantified it (was it a £100 issue or a £1m risk? No one knows)
You assumed value (confirmation bias and anchoring bias are strong motivators)
You pitched based on your excitement and not our urgency.

Buyers Don’t Change for Convenience. They Change for Pain.

In complex tech B2B sales, the risks are high, for buyer and seller alike. Any B2B sales mistakes can have a profound impact on the success (or not) of your deal.

Budgets are tight. Change is expensive and risky, politically and operationally.

Buyers only move when the cost of not acting is made clear.

And if your tech sales discovery doesn’t expose that cost (of not making a change) and if it doesn’t connect pain to risk to financial impact, then your “solution” is just background noise.

“No pain, no proposal. No diagnosis, no deal.” Matt Earle

Problem-Centred Selling: The Cure for Premature Sales Pitch Timing

What do top-performing sales teams do instead?

They go slow to go fast, and through this, see significant close rate improvement.

They spend more time understanding the problem than showcasing the solution. They resist the urge to pitch. Instead, they follow a problem-centred discovery process:

Ask layered, buyer-led questions based on extensive preparation, role play and team coaching.
Use techniques like the "Five Whys" to dig deeper and risk the chance of making the buyer feel uncomfortable as they realise the impact of the problem (now and in the future)
Quantify impact across the business, ensuring each stakeholder articulates, validates and measures the pain in their part of the business, to them personally and in their language.
Challenge assumptions and surface hidden blockers through well thought out and planned tech sales discovery.

Only then do they recommend a path forward. And not because it’s in the sales playbook. but because the buyer is asking for it.

How to Pitch at the Right Time

Real tech sales discovery isn’t the first 10 minutes of a call.

It’s not a list of qualifying questions. It’s not just “needs analysis.”

It’s the moment the buyer sees their problem clearly, and maybe for the first time.That’s where urgency lives. That’s when trust is built. That’s when the close becomes inevitable.