The Greatest Sales Pitch Ever: 7 Real Pitches and What They Teach

What is the greatest sales pitch ever?

There is no official scoreboard, so here is our standard. A great pitch is real, it is documented, and it moved a buyer to act. By that test, the iPhone launch sits at the top of our list.

Below are the pitches that earn the title, from keynote stages to late-night TV to the Shark Tank set. For each one we show what happened, link to the record, and pull out the move you can steal. If you want the playbook for building your own, start with our Pitch & Scripts section.

1. Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone (2007)

Jobs opened with a promise: "Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything." Then he named his three products and kept repeating them until the audience got ahead of him.

The payoff line: "These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone." He followed with "Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone."

The offer was concrete. Apple's press release that day listed a 4GB model at $499 and an 8GB model at $599, shipping in June 2007. The phone went on sale June 29, 2007, and Apple sold 270,000 iPhones in its first week in the U.S.

The move to steal

• Use things the buyer already understands (an iPod, a phone) to explain the new thing.
• Let the room finish your thought. People believe conclusions they reach themselves.
• Close with specifics: price, storage, ship date.

Notice what Jobs did not do. He did not open with the processor, the screen size or the carrier deal. He opened with what the buyer already wanted, then made the product the answer.

2. "Sugar water" and the recruiting pitch that landed a CEO (1983)

Not every great pitch sells a product. Jobs wanted Pepsi executive John Sculley to run Apple, and Sculley had already said no. In PBS's Triumph of the Nerds, Sculley recalls Jobs asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

Sculley says he "just gulped." He became Apple's CEO in April 1983.

The move to steal: make the cost of saying no feel personal. Jobs did not pitch salary or stock. He pitched the buyer's own future, and made staying put the risky choice.

3. Ron Popeil: "Set it and forget it"

Ron Popeil founded Ronco in 1964 and sold the Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone and the Showtime Rotisserie. The Associated Press credited him with much of the vocabulary of the infomercial, including "Set it and forget it" and "Now how much would you pay?"

He also popularized "But wait, there's more," the line that turned every TV pitch into a stack of rising value. In a 1997 AP interview he explained why he kept going: "If there's a need for these things, I can't help myself."

The move to steal

Popeil sold outcomes in four words. The buyer does not want a rotisserie.

The buyer wants dinner without babysitting the oven. Find your four words.

4. Billy Mays and the OxiClean demo

Billy Mays started on the Atlantic City boardwalk, selling a portable washing device to people walking by. In October 2000 he shot an infomercial for OxiClean, and his "Hi, Billy Mays here" opening became one of the most recognized voices on American TV.

When he died in 2009 at age 50, OxiClean's chief marketing officer said, "Billy was the best of the pitchman genre that he pioneered." Fellow pitchman Tony Little put the lesson plainly: "In selling, you have to sell yourself first."

The move to steal: demonstrate, don't describe. Mays dropped the product in the stain and let the camera do the arguing. In your world that means a live screen share, a before-and-after, a number on their data.

5. Scrub Daddy on Shark Tank (2012)

Aaron Krause pitched a smiley-faced sponge on Shark Tank in 2012. Lori Greiner put in $200,000 for 20 percent. The day after the episode aired, the two sold 42,000 sponges in under seven minutes on QVC.

Total revenue passed $100 million by January 2017. The pitch worked because the demo was the pitch. A sponge is something every viewer can picture using that night, so the product sold itself on camera.

6. Doorbot on Shark Tank: the pitch that lost the room and won anyway (2013)

Jamie Siminoff asked the Sharks for $700,000 at a $7 million valuation for his video doorbell, Doorbot. All the sharks except Kevin O'Leary passed, and Siminoff turned down O'Leary's offer and walked out with no deal.

The company was renamed Ring. Amazon agreed to buy it in 2018 for a price reportedly more than $1 billion, though neither company disclosed the figure.

The lesson cuts both ways. A pitch can fail with one audience and still be right. Know your floor, and don't take a deal that breaks your business just to hear a yes.

7. David Ogilvy's Rolls-Royce ad (1958)

A pitch does not need a stage. In 1958 David Ogilvy wrote a print ad for Rolls-Royce under a headline that Wikiquote notes is sometimes called the most famous headline in advertising history: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."

One concrete detail did the work of a page of adjectives. You can hear the quiet. Ogilvy explained his standard in Ogilvy on Advertising: he did not want readers to call an ad creative, he wanted them to find it "so interesting that you buy the product."

The move to steal: trade your adjectives for one fact the buyer can picture. "Fast onboarding" is forgettable. "Your first rep is live by lunch" is a picture, and only if it is true.

What is the "sell me this pen" sales pitch from The Wolf of Wall Street?

The Wolf of Wall Street opened in December 2013, directed by Martin Scorsese and based on Jordan Belfort's 2007 memoir. Its most quoted sales scene starts with Belfort handing over a pen and saying "sell me this pen."

In the film's version, a friend asks Belfort to write his name on a napkin. Belfort says he doesn't have a pen.

That is the trick: create the need, then hold the only solution. The film calls it supply and demand, and it is the sales pitch Wolf of Wall Street fans still quote in bullpens and job interviews.

Two warnings. First, the real Belfort pleaded guilty to fraud tied to stock-market manipulation and served 22 months, so this is a lesson in technique, not a role model.

Second, in a job interview the stronger answer is to ask questions before you pitch. We cover that in our guide to sales interview questions and answers.

What are the best sales pitches in movies and TV?

Two scripted scenes get studied by real sales teams, and both are clearly fiction.

• Don Draper's Carousel pitch. In the Mad Men season one finale, which aired October 18, 2007, Draper sells Kodak on its slide projector with photos of his own family. His line: "This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine." Kodak signs.
• Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross. The 1992 film's speech is a pitch to the sales team, not a buyer: "Always be closing" and "Coffee's for closers only." Great theater. Terrible management.

What makes a good sales pitch? The pattern behind the greats

Line the pitches up and the same moves show up again and again.

Notice what is missing from that table: clever slides, big vocabulary, a long company history. A good sales pitch spends its time on the buyer's problem and the proof that it goes away. Everything else is a delay between you and the decision.

A good sales pitch also expects pushback. Every one of these sellers had an answer ready for "too expensive" and "not now." If that is where your deals stall, read our breakdown of objection handling for sales.

What are the best sales pitch one-liners?

Some of the strongest pitches fit in one breath. When reps hunt for the best sales pitch one liners, these documented lines are the ones worth studying:

• "Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything." Steve Jobs, Macworld 2007.
• "Set it and forget it." Ron Popeil.
• "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?" Steve Jobs to John Sculley.
• Apple's 2001 iPod launch packed the pitch into one fact: up to 1,000 CD-quality songs in a 6.5-ounce design.

And a few we wrote ourselves, labeled as Closers Weekly examples, for you to adapt:

• Example: "You'll know by Friday if this pays for itself."
• Example: "We don't add work to your team. We take work off it."
• Example: "Your best rep's process, on every rep's screen."

How do you use these great sales pitch examples in your next call?

1. Write your four words. The outcome, not the product.
2. Build one demo moment. Something the buyer sees, not something you say.
3. Name the cost of doing nothing. Make staying put feel like the risk.
4. Get specific at the end. Price, timeline, next step. Then ask for the decision with one of these closing techniques for sales.

For full slide-by-slide structures and scripts, see our sales pitch presentation examples.

Back to that stage in San Francisco. Jobs could have opened with the specs.

Instead he gave the room three things it already wanted, let it do the math, and only then said the name.

That is the greatest sales pitch ever because the buyer felt smart for getting there first. Build your next pitch so your customer gets there first too.