Do you have an Elevator Pitch?

Do you have an Elevator Pitch?  An Elevator Pitch is a brief speech designed to spark interest in what your company does.  Think of a short elevator ride – you have a maximum of 30 seconds to persuade your future client to want to hear more.

In sales, we often associate the Elevator Pitch with cold calling for new business development.  It’s certainly helpful here, but is also useful in many other situations such as networking events, face to face meetings, even that unexpected chat with the person next to you on an airplane.

And because you can’t predict when you’ll get a perfect opportunity to introduce your business to a complete stranger, who could turn out to be an ideal prospect, I recommend you prepare a few words so that you’re ready.

Key components of an Elevator Pitch are to

1. Tell the prospect who you are
2. Explain why you are calling / speaking to them
3. Tell the client, from their perspective, “What’s in it for me

Once you've done this, then you can ask permission to probe more deeply into their current goals, and how they intend to achieve these goals.

You need to have a strong benefit focus.  It’s all about their pain point, their benefit, not the features of your business.  It’s all about what they will gain.

It also needs to get their attention - tell them how you are making your customers love you, and why this is so great.

As you’ll see from the example below, you are not trying to “sell” them something.  You are merely checking if you can help them to achieve their business goals.  And who wouldn’t want to improve their business? 

Imagine you work for ABC Company, who specialise in streamlining internal communications.  Perhaps Ian is an ideal prospect, and you’d like the opportunity to meet with him.

You could say something like this: 

You - Hi, is this Ian Smith?

Ian – Yes 

You – Great.  Ian, this is Mary from ABC Company.  We help businesses to refine their internal communications.  We do this by studying their current processes, evaluating their business goals, and identifying areas where they could streamline communications, and thereby save on costs.

We know that at your company and others, there is a lot of pressure on margins these days.

Could I ask you a few questions to see if there’s any chance we might be able to help your company as well? 

At this point, one of three things will happen:

1. Your ideal prospect, Ian, will be interested, and will put mentally give you a few minutes to ask the 3-4 questions you have prepared. This will allow you to discover more about their business needs, and to discuss how you might be able to help.
2. Your ideal prospect will be interested, but may not be able to talk right now. You can then arrange a better time to call-back.  Be prepared for an excellent phonecall.  You have just demonstrated respect for your ideal prospect when you checked if you could talk further.  When you do call back, your prospect will remember this, and be open to talk as you have telephoned at a better time for them.
3. Your ideal prospect may not be interested. Now is your opportunity to discover why they are not interested.

Always give them an opportunity to receive emailed information, just so they know what’s out there.  It is amazing the number of people that have just said No, who will then say Yes when offered information – just so that they can be informed about what is available.  Nobody wants to be ignorant.

You can then determine the best time to follow them up.  I would usually recommend calling back in 4-5 business days to check they have received the information, then following up in 4-6 months (or whatever you determine is the best time, based on the information they have provided and other key industry factors such as demand at a particular time of year, etc) 

Particularly in this third scenario, you need to remain positive.  This leaves the door open to further client engagement.  And in the intervening 4-6 months, a lot can change.  Their industry could be radically altered by world events or financial markets, their current supplier could mess up or simply fail to keep in contact with them.  Offering helpful information in a non-threatening way could pave the way for them to become your client. 

Through your conversation, you will also discover if there is anyone else at the business that you should be talking to.  You can then contact that person, and start your Elevator Pitch with them. 

Making your Elevator Pitch for the first time will probably feel a little scary.  But just like the Elevator – look up!  Aim for the moon, and at the very least, you’ll hit some stars!