Have you ever heard of the terminology ‘Elevator Pitch’?
An elevator pitch is a brief, persuasive ‘pitch’ for your business, lasting less than 30 seconds, and being interesting, succinct, and hopefully memorable.
We believe, it never does any harm to revisit the basics, don’t start thinking that tools such as the ‘Elevator Pitch’ are just for those starting a new business. That’s not the case, an elevator pitch is just as important for someone who’s been in business for decades as it is for a start-up business owner. They are for anyone who is trying to take their business to the next level, which hopefully everyone in business is!
You want your elevator pitch to sound anything but like an elevator pitch – if you’re asked at Level 1 when you first board the elevator what your business does, then by Level 10 when you hop out you need to have told your story in a way that gets the message over, but in a natural conversational style.
(And, yes, I know, some of us don’t live in places with lifts that take 30 seconds to reach the “other level” but I’m sure you understand that the elevator pitch is just as much a concept as it is literal).
Here are a few tips to create that persuasive pitch for what you do:
- Identify your goal – this is usually the obvious, telling others about what you do, what your business is all about. But in some cases it might be promoting a specific product, or a new service maybe. Just be sure you know what it is you want to get across before you start. (You are allowed to have more than one elevator pitch, by the way!)
- Explain what you do – start by telling your companion what your business actually does, but do so by focusing on the solutions it provides or the benefits it brings to others. Make it memorable and, if you can, a little bit exciting. And with that in mind, if it doesn’t excite you, then maybe you should start developing your pitch again. After all, if you’re not enthused about what you do, then why should anyone else be?
- Communicate your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) – what is it that makes your business unique, what makes it better than all the rest? Be confident, and tell your story confidently!
- Engage with a question – if there’s time, have an open ended question up your sleeve. “So how does your firm handle those sorts of issues?”, for example. Two tips – firstly an open-ended question must elicit a response from the other person that is not simply “Yes” or “No”, and secondly, make sure you know the answer to that question if it were asked of you!
- Put it all together – write it all out, then read it aloud with a timer going to make sure it’s snappy, compelling and under 30 seconds. You don’t want to risk monopolising the conversation, nor losing the subject’s attention.
- Practice, practice, practice…
And always have a business card ready to hand over as your lift arrives at its destination floor – if you’ve done a good enough job of selling your business and what it does, you want to be sure that you’ll get a follow-up call in the very near future as a result.
Talk to us at @PrimeStrategiesGroup if you’d like to discuss this in greater detail. As always, we’d be happy to help.