Your Perfect Elevator Pitch

Time is a scarce resource. Whether in person or on your website, people these days aren’t willing to listen to long appeals regardless of how compelling they are. Perhaps you’ve already heard of the elevator pitch. The premise is that you bump into a potential customer you’ve never met before in an elevator and you only have that short time to convince the prospect that he or she needs your product or service before the elevator reaches the floor where your prospect exits.

If you have an elevator pitch already, great. The perfect elevator pitch has four elements: What your product or services does, the benefits, what outcomes you promise, and what steps you want that prospect to take in order to become a customer.

But wait, there is more to it than a bunch of statements. You need to capture your elevator partner’s imagination. The best way to do that is to tell a story. But, there’s no time for that. Instead describe a situation that he or she is already familiar with that illustrates the setting for your solution. Let’s say your solution helps people find products in a store quickly. Start out with “You know when you walk into a store and can never find what you are looking for without walking a mile?” That does two things. First, it creates a mental image of a problem you will solve. Second, it makes an emotional connection with the listener. Eliciting an emotional response will avoid the resistance that people will naturally feel, if you immediately try to sell. Building on the scene you created, you can then tell how you have helped people, what your product does, the promise you make, and the next steps your prospect should take.

Concise and compelling language is the essence of an elevator pitch. Once you have that elevator pitch nailed you can apply it to all the marketing channels you use. The bottom line here is that a clear problem with a clear solution helps build a successful business.

Try writing a pitch that has all that and that you can memorize for the next time you are in that imaginary elevator.