What Is An Elevator Pitch?
Whether you are out at a business conference, mingling with friends, or you just so happen to know somebody who knows somebody who’s able to help you take your company to the next level, you’ll get this question: “What do you do for a living?” Or, “what is your company about?” This is when you need to be able to communicate not only what you do, but why you’re worth talking more to.
Think about this very common scenario. You’re at a networking event loaded with potential clients for your business and someone walks up to you and says “so what do you do?” Your response can make your business millions…or result in its demise? The typical response is “I’m an solicitor,” or “I’m an accountant” That’s not WHAT you do… that’s WHO you are, knowing exactly what to say and the order to say it is the real secret to building a successful business.
Fail to get this right, and little else matters.
So what exactly is an elevator pitch? In a nutshell, it’s just what it sounds like: a short, 30-60 second well-crafted business pitch telling someone who you are and why they should want to hire you or your business. It’s called the elevator pitch because it’s meant to represent the amount of time you’d have if you were stuck in an elevator with someone riding from the bottom of the building to the top.
Elevator speeches are good for so much more than just catching someone in a small enclosed space. You never know who you might run into in the pub, or at the cinema, or grocery store…or any other number of places.
A solid elevator pitch will allow you to distill down to the purest form exactly who you are and what you offer, and why they need to talk to you more.It provides the focus that can help to set you apart from all the other companies who are vying for the same business.
It’s all about Persuasion Marketing
These short messages MUST focus solely on the benefits as prospects buy based on emotion, so your message must hit their emotional hot buttons. These messages can range from a ten second up to a sixty-second version of your elevator pitch. You probably know that emotion plays a critical role when you communicate with your prospects but in order to capture a prospect’s attention, you have to start by tapping into their hot buttons as it’s the hot buttons that create the emotion.
You MUST create a series of short, clear and concise messages that compel them so they want to know more information about your product or service.
Your 10 second elevator pitch = WHAT you do.
Your 30 second elevator pitch = HOW you do it
You INTERRUPT them with your ten second pitch and then You ENGAGE them with your thirty second version. You have just unleashed the first two components of the marketing equation on your prospect.
Why this works, is that what first fascinates people is the “what”. This is why most people… when they first meet someone… always ask “what do you do?” So you need to respond with a “shock and awe” statement that Immediately Interrupts the person you’re speaking to. They will become so enraptured in what you just said that they will instantly demand to know HOW you do it. Now they want to be EDUCATED. The marketing equation follows the exact same process all human beings go through when they make a buying decision. Once you educate them, they begin to see the extraordinary value you offer that no one else in your industry can match. Now they want to try out your product or service to see if it really does what you say it does. They’re ready for an OFFER… the final component. Make that offer low or no-risk… they’ll try it every time.
Take your ten second and thirty second elevator pitches and expand the content to a sixty second version. The sixty second version is the ten second and the thirty second pitches combined with the educate and offer components and roll them all together into a single elevator pitch and that becomes your future marketing message.
It’s all about persuasion.
Marketing is a process… NOT an event. There’s more to marketing than “getting your name out”. You now know the process, and you have the marketing equation to guide you through it, If you act on this information, you should see a dramatic increase in the number of leads you begin to generate… the number of clients you begin to attract… and the amount of money you see accumulating on your bottom line. So the next step is for you to develop your four-part elevator pitch and immediately integrate it into all of your marketing collateral. This core message becomes a beacon for your business.
The four parts of your elevator pitch are Interrupt (your 10 second version), Engage (your 30 second version) Educate and Offer (Your full 60 second version).
Here are the benefits Of A Four Part Elevator Pitch:-
- It attracts customers to you in droves
• It drives your profits through the roof
• It creates a unifying message that gets your entire staff on the same page
• It brings huge success to areas that used to be difficult… especially your marketing.
Here’s an Example Elevator Pitch.
Part 1: Elevator Pitch – Interrupt.
I help small business owners who find themselves struggling, stuck or just not growing as fast as they would like to understand why that’s happening to them… and then I give them a proven process that helps them to immediately generate more leads, attract more clients and make more money than they have ever made before… even in this horrible economy.”
Part 2: Elevator Pitch – Engage.
Do you know how business owners today are desperately looking for fast access to the answers they need to grow the business they want? My company has created the world’s first business growth system that gives small business owners and entrepreneurs access to all the tools, resources and support they need to grow their business faster and… with greater confidence and certainty.”
Part 3: Elevator Pitch – Educate.
Our Business Growth System uses a proven process that has already benefited thousands of business owners around the world. It’s simple to use and is specifically designed to avoid overwhelming the business owner. So that they can get on with running the business whilst growing the business.”
Part 4: Elevator Pitch – Offer.
Why don’t I show you how your business can benefit from this? I conduct a 90-minute small business assessment for £500 where I show business owners just like you how to take your business from where it is right now to where you want it to be. As a professional courtesy, I would consider it a privilege to provide you with that assessment For FREE.”
Of course, you’ll have to adapt this for you, your delivery style and your particular business but I can guarantee that you’ll get far greater results with this style of elevator pitch than you will using any others.
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
