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The Truth About Elevator Pitches

What no one really tells you about elevator pitches is that they aren’t actually pitches. They are not even soft sales lobs. That’s right, no elevator pitch has ever sold a product, got someone hired, garnered angel funding or earned a new client. Is that surprising? Think about it, would you hire someone or spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the basis of thirty-seconds of speech? It’s an elevator pitch, not a magic spell.

Your talents as a witch aside, elevator pitches do serve several useful purposes. First and foremost, they make you think about what you do. An elevator pitch makes you dig in and really understand what your unique offering is. More often than not, in addition to giving you more insight into what makes you unique in the marketplace, it also makes you appreciate that you have multiple unique offerings.

An elevator pitch also lets you do something that has become increasingly difficult since the introduction of social media. It teaches you how to deliver a proper introduction. An elevator pitch delivers information about you, or your product or your company neatly and succinctly. It tells your audience the things that you really want them to know in a way that is not weird or time-consuming.

That’s the third thing the elevator pitch does. It teaches you to boil down your message to the essentials. Your pitch answers the question, what exactly do I need this person to know? It gives them nothing more and nothing less. If you can capture their interest with an effective introduction you will earn the right to deliver your real pitch. That’s where the sale happens or the job offering shows up but first, you have to start with the elevator pitch or perhaps if we want to accurately describe what you are doing, the elevator introduction.

Tips for building great elevator pitches:

  • An elevator pitch is the briefest pitch you can give. It’s a quality introduction that takes about 20 seconds. You can take longer but the longer you keep talking without interaction with your audience, the more opportunity there is for things to go wrong.
  • An elevator pitch is generally a two or three sentence description. What goes into your pitch is a reflection of what you are trying to achieve.
    • New job or client: If you are looking for a job or a client your pitch will cover what you do, what you want to do and why you do it.
    • Product or service sales: If it’s a product you’re trying to share information on, your pitch will share the benefits, how people use it and what makes it unique.
  • Share what makes you unique in the market, what do you offer that others do not?
  • Describe what you do or what your product does well. Does it save money? If so, then be specific, who saved money and how much. Use explicit statistics that demonstrate that you know your stuff and have a clear understanding of how your product works.
  • There is no one pitch that fits all audiences. Create custom pitches to serve different purposes.
  • All pitches should have elements of the following:
    • Information: There’s little value to a pitch that is so abbreviated or clever that it becomes obtuse. You want to share something about yourself. The idea is to inform and relate to the person you are talking to.
    • Confidence: You should be comfortable delivering your pitch and while you should always be self-assured, you should never be arrogant or boastful. When you brag you’re a bore. No one wants to talk to a bore much less do business with one.
  • Pitches should be interesting enough to capture attention and make you memorable. Consider what makes you unique. What distinctive features, qualities or facts are part of your original idea or offering?

Once you’ve delivered your pitch, follow through.

  • Don’t forget that this is an exchange intended to build a relationship. Get to know the person you are speaking to better. The best way to do that is to get them talking. Hook them with questions about themselves. Ask them about their work. How did they get started? What do they like best?
  • Share your business card. Once you have engaged in an exchange, offer your business card. It’s a great way to create an opportunity for future communications. Generally speaking, don’t ask for their card. Once you offer yours, if they are interested, they will offer you their card.
  • Follow through, reach out through LinkedIn and get connected. Look for opportunities to provide assistance. Do you know of a book, blog or article that might help that person or that they might find interesting? Do you know someone they would like to meet?

Sample Elevator Pitch

I run a small communications shop called CommStorm that helps entrepreneurs and associations tell their stories. I use my years of political, corporate and association experience to build thoughtful communications strategies. And while I love developing strategies, the best part of what I do is getting in there and turning great ideas into reality.

If you understand what you have to offer, know how to introduce yourself effectively and can do it all succinctly and clearly, then you’ve accomplished more than most and that’s often the edge you need to succeed where others fail. So build your elevator pitch, work on it indefinitely, change it to reflect evolving needs and understand the value of a great pitch.

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Build A Pitch – 3 Online Elevator Pitch Builders

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Build A Pitch – 3 Online Elevator Pitch Builders

The search for the perfect elevator pitch is something that preoccupies entrepreneurs, students, job seekers and many others. There are probably a million articles online that talk about how to build a strong elevator pitch. With a push towards automation, I anticipated finding dozens of tools that could build the pitch for you and while there are numerous tools that help you to build an attractive slide deck, there are relatively few tools that help you to build a pitch from scratch, here are three.

 

Pitcherific https://pitcherific.com/

Pitcherific helps you to create different types of pitches depending on your membership. With the free account, you can work on your elevator pitch. Pitcherific starts by focusing you on four elements, the hook, the problem, the solution and the close. Its strength is in helping with the timing of your pitch, providing a framework you complete depending on your objectives and allowing you to practice your pitch with a teleprompter and choice of simulated audience.

The teleprompter function also allows you to test your speaking speed both with the pitch in front of you or with it hidden. It allows you change your potential audience so that you can better imagine how it will feel to deliver your message.

You can also record your pitch with Pitcherific, a great feature if you have to send your pitch to someone or if you want to see how you look in action. If you need help, then Pitcherific allows you to co-edit a pitch online.

From my perspective,  an elevator pitch as a quality introduction (See, The Truth About Elevator Pitches), rather than the world’s fastest sales job, so the structure Pitcherific provides is limited. Fortunately, paid accounts can create custom templates and you can adjust timing to suit your needs.

 

Buzzuka http://www.buzzuka.com/

Buzzuka helps you to structure your elevator pitch based on a series of questions and then generates the pitch using your answers. Needless to say, that can make for some awkward pitches, but you can always edit them once you see how the structure was intended to work.

What I like about the Buzzuka process is that it makes you think about your objectives, your benefits and features and most importantly, your audience. Buzzuka also provides examples of pitches created by other users. What I like less is how much your final Buzzuka pitch sounds like a commercial. If you are pitching an idea in an environment that expects a fast sales job, then this tool is a great way to start, but if you are looking for an elevator pitch to use in most day-to-day environments, then this won’t quite hit the spot.

 

Pitch Builder https://pitch.fi/

Pitch Builder helps you to build a pitch deck that should take 24 seconds to deliver. It’s a free tool and helps you to build a persuasive message by focusing your attention on identifying the problem, the solution, the market, your plan and proposed deal. It also allows you to add information about yourself.

The challenge is in the number of questions asked and the way the questions are presented. If you actually follow along in most cases your pitch will use up more time then you should.   In addition, the slide deck format implies more formality than you would typically have at a reception or in an elevator. The product is in the beta stages, so I expect to see new features or refinements with time.

 

All three of these online tools have elements that are helpful, with Pitcherific probably being the most useful at this stage, but if your pitch really matters, then nothing is as effective as you.  You alone can read your audience in the moment when you are delivering.  You alone can adjust and respond. Having a well-crafted pitch is the beginning of the process of engagement, not the objective. Your pitch is about being prepared and understanding your product, service or your own talents well enough to talk about them with ease.

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The Truth About Elevator Pitches

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The Tool For Making The Perfect Elevator Pitch

 

 

I’ve been looking for an automated pitch generator ever since Harvard removed their automatic pitch maker. I’ve finally found one at Buzzuka. OK, it’s not perfect, you actually need a human being and some passion for that, but what it does nicely is put you into the right frame of mind and get you to a starting point. Pitcherific also provides a useful framework to get you started on (and practising) your pitch.

Both of these tools help with the structure of a pitch but they won’t make the pitch for you.  You still need to do some homework.

Know Your Audience: There is little value in creating a pitch that delivers perfectly what you want but has no resonance with your audience. You’re not pitching yourself. You’re also not going to want to deliver the same message regardless of who you’re speaking to.

Be brief and clear: It seems like an obvious statement, but being succinct does not mean become cryptic. You need to be brief and clear. Your great-aunt Petunia and your eight-year-old nephew should be able to understand it.

Answer Essential Questions:  If the response to your pitch is, huh? You haven’t been clear enough. Make sure that your audience knows exactly what you want from them and that you answer that age-old question, “What’s in it for me?”

No Pick-Up Lines: If you use a line like, “Heaven must be missing an investor angel because you’re here with me right now.” Not only will you come off as cheesy, but also cliched. Get their attention, but do it with grace. Go left if they expect you to go right.  Use humour, gently.

When I talk about my experience, people typically assume that I learned about government relations during my years on Parliament Hill. I always respond the same way. “GR on parliament hill? No, I didn’t learn anything about government relations while I was there, I learned all about public relations because that’s who our audience was.”

My answer is unexpected, so it becomes memorable.  It’s not rocket science, it just shows a little-unexpected logic.

Renew It: Don’t take your pitch for granted. Always consider new ways of delivering it.  Refine and refresh it over time.

One size does not fit all: if you have different target audiences, then you should have different pitches. Context should also change the nature of the pitch.  For example, there’s the pitch to have a meeting that happens in an elevator and then there’s the pitch to sell your idea that might happen while sitting next to someone on a plane.

Have you ever delivered a great pitch in a pinch? Have you ever been sold something because the pitch was too good to refuse? I’d love to hear your views.

Related Articles:

The Truth About Elevator Pitches

Build A Pitch – 3 Online Elevator Pitch Builders

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