If you’re in sales, running your own business, or have an idea for a start-up, you should learn how to do a 60-second “elevator pitch”. A random elevator pitch in marketing pulls down the image of your business and turns away the prospects. Learn how to create an elevator pitch that is brief and gets your point across effectively, whether for your business or personal brand.
When someone important asks: Who are you? You can answer that question effectively and sell your skills by using something called an elevator pitch or elevator speech. A prepared elevator pitch is important in three situations:
- This is your first time meeting someone.
- You don’t have much time to capture the person’s attention.
- The person can help you somehow.
Hold on! Here are some important tips to make your elevator pitch more impressive!
1. Know your products and services inside and out.
Knowing more than your competition will help you stand out. Look into the details of your products and services before crafting your elevator pitch. Think about what makes your product unique and why customers should choose your business over others. For example, maybe you sell rare fabric with handprints by local artists. These details will make your prospects want to know more about your business.
2. Your final goal
The point of the 90-second pitch is just to get people interested in your product or service so you can have a formal meeting. A “win” would be if the other person agreed to schedule a meeting so you could make a more formal pitch. That’s where you need to focus on closing.
3. Keep your pitch short and sweet
You only have eight seconds to make an impression, according to Wikipedia. Keep your information concise and to the point so that people will know what you do and what they need, after only hearing a sentence or two – and that’s a pitch! You need to grab their attention right away, or you’ll lose it if they can’t figure out where you’re going. Your leading sentence after the opening one should also be straight to the point and add more clarity to your previous one.
4. Pitch the problem first
An ordinary person might not see the obvious benefit of a product like yours. Maybe start with, don’t you think washing utensils is time consuming?”
Now you’ve set up a problem that your audience will be able to relate to. A problem you can fix. Now you can offer them something. You should spend about 2/3 of your 90-second pitch on setting up the problem.
5. Organize Your Points
Write a short summary of your pitch using bullet points or a brief outline. Make sure your sentences make sense and then check them for mistakes. Give it a read-through to make sure everything flows in an order.
6. Use easy-to-understand language, avoid industry jargon.
Don’t get too technical. A lot of sales pitches get bogged down with too much legal or technical talk, or they’re just too wordy or fancy. Having a couple of impressive phrases or statistics can be helpful, but don’t stuff your elevator speech with numbers or jargon. Keep it simple!
7. It’s a story
Start with, what will be the problem without your solution? Explain what the possibilities are and how big/small they are. Use analogies to help your audience understand your product better.
Add a killer closing to this story. Give them a memorable 1-liner that they can repeat to others. If they’re excited and wanting more when they leave, you’ve done your job.
8. Practice
Practise your pitch in loud, awkward situations. That way, your surroundings won’t distract you. Try recording yourself, and then watching your pitch from your audience’s perspective.
Act it out with a friend you trust. Ask her to not only listen to what you’re saying, but also pay attention to your eye contact and body language.
You want to sound like you’re not reading from a script, but you also want to be prepared. The key to a good marketing pitch is to sound like you’re not selling anything. Practice will help you deliver your pitch more confidently.
Takeaway:
The whole point of an elevator pitch is to get the listener’s attention. You want to give them a brief overview of what you’re offering, so they can decide if they want to meet with you, buy your product, or invest in your company. If you look prepared, confident, and concise, you’re much more likely to get that meeting.
Use these tips to craft your Elevator Pitch, which you can use when meeting prospects at networking events, in passing, or at meetings.
If you want to learn how to make a great Elevator pitch or hear about other effective marketing strategies from the experts, drop us a message!
