Sales Pitch is an important early ceramic dish by Grayson Perry. The artist has described it as being a ‘kind of manifesto’, and he continues to identify with the agenda it describes. Perry has selected the dish for two important exhibitions of his work in 2020 and 2023, and on both occasions he wrote about it in the accompanying catalogues. When Sales Pitch was exhibited in 2020, the artist provided the following reflection about the work:

"Right from my very earliest ceramics I used words a lot. I found it easier to be funny with words but I enjoyed the look of text as well. This plate is a kind of minimalist joke, an artwork trying to sell itself. Looking back thirty years it all still rings true. I was a cocky bastard. I love the tone of desperation that creeps in towards the end; I really needed the cash to buy my next motorbike. In the centre are two of my pre-1992 potter's, ‘100% ART’ and ‘MADE IN U.K.’."

He wrote about it again when it was exhibited in 2023:

"Thirty-five years after making this plate it still makes me laugh. I feel my attitude towards the art world has not changed much, even if my relationship to it is vastly different. I am very much an insider now. This artwork reaches through the fourth wall and makes a cocky bid to sell itself. It is also a kind of manifesto stated with the hubris and disarming honesty I probably still employ. It makes me laugh because a lot of the cheeky predictions have come true. This piece would have been a very good investment at the time—it is now worth at least twenty times the asking price in 1987—and I did play an important role in getting traditional craft techniques accepted into the heady world of fine art. Walk round an art fair today and it is dotted with ceramics and textile works galore. I have much more developed skills today but my core spirit has perhaps not changed so much."

The eponymous 'sales pitch' imprinted on the dish is transcribed here:

"Come on, this one, it's the one just right for you. It suits you, complements your cheque book. Now, now, none of that, "Oh, but the one I want has been bought already" nonsense. Look, it's classic Grayson Perry. I'll put it this way, the more you buy the more successful I become. In economic terms, galleries promote my work, my reputation grows, my prices rise so does your measly investment. No matter how much you say that you like this nothing positive will happen except in knee-jerk reaction to cash. It makes sense, these word plates are very popular and I don't make that many. It's a lot of work you know, on an hourly basis it probably works out much less than you earn. My success is guaranteed, it's just a matter of time, have not had a bad review. True, pottery is not the most glamorous media through which to become a superstar, but that's the beautiful irony of it, and so British. You and me both, we're crusaders if you like, helping this ancient art shrug off the twee woven cliché, earned by a generation of failed artist hippies, peeved because they thought their down to earth skills made up for lack of imagination and style. With your help I can take pottery into the arena of comment and ideas, dare I say it, fine art. It all sounds very pretentious but think of the money. Let['s] "face" it, art these days is just about trends within a trend, that is, Post Modernism. Returning to vulgar trade, if you like what you see the compliments are only accepts when accompanied by a cheque card. Come on lovey, it's one hundred percent solid ceramic, it'll last a million years, or how about a vase?"