Elevator Pitch

“Elevator Pitch” a very popular concept, but the knowledge about how to put it together and when to use it is, mildly speaking, mediocre. When I ask about it, it rings a bell with most people, but that’s as far as it goes. All the more, that there are a lot of versions of how and why to create it. I will focus on one that I consider logical and effective. So let's break down the Elevator Pitch.

Step 1 – The Name

When writing the article in my native tongue I was wondering whether to translate the name. However, I’ve decided to leave it as it is. While the original name is still recognizable, the translation is not used at all (neither in other countries, not that I know of). Since there is no suitable local replacement, I’ve decided to stick to the original name.

Why elevator? It is a part of an American hypothetical story that reflects the spirit of a need. Imagine getting into an elevator on the ground floor. Inside, you notice a person your future may depend on. You will be together for as long as the elevator ride lasts. The time that you have is how long it takes for the elevator to bring that person up to their destination floor. That’s all the time you have to introduce yourself and your project to that person. In our case, we are assuming that the context is professional development.

An Elevator Pitch should last about a dozen seconds. This is, obviously, a symbolic example, so the time should also be treated symbolically. In practice, let’smake it a few minutes. That's all you have to achieve two goals: make the listener interested and help him remember your message. It is a hard thing to do because building short messages is the most difficult.

One more thing: this is a spoken message. Prepare it according to spoken language rules, not written. No brackets, abbreviations, inserted sentences, etc. Forget about the beauty of the descriptions of nature. It’s not Lord of the Rings; use short simple sentences, even nominal sentences. You are hammering nails. With every hit, you nail it.

Step 2 – The Construction

What do most of us do when we have little time to convey a lot of information? Well... we make a mistake. The mistake is to speak faster. To quickly fit in as much as we possibly can we turn on the "machine gun" mode and we pull the trigger. The effect is the opposite of what was intended. It’s neither interesting for the listener, nor easy to remember. We shower him with a bucket full of puzzle pieces, so he shakes them off and goes on indifferent. He didn't understand much and remembered even less. What’s more, he’s tired of it and has a bad opinion about our communication.

Do you think your interlocutor is a busy person? Assume that he is just like you, which is quite busy. He has a lot of meetings, receives a lot of emails, text messages, has a lot of phone calls, there are a lot of people around him, and you are one of the crowd. To be effective in communication, you need to be precise, provide information in a condensed way, starting with the most important, even only the most important, specific, in small portions - short sentences.

An Elevator Pitch consists of four parts:

- "I am..." - 1 sentence

- "My experience is..." - 5-8 sentences

- "My education..." - 2 sentences

- "My professional goal is..." - 1 sentence

At the very beginning, in one sentence you present the essence of all your professional experience. Note - this is not about the name of your current position. How to create such an essence? Let me refer you to my book “Czy jeste? tym, który puka?” (Are You The One Who Knocks?), chapter How to analyse your own professional experience? The sentence should be simple, containing 3-5 bits of information, separated by commas. No linguistic ornaments, fancy sentence connectors, no blah blahblah. What are the 3-5 bits of information? Start with the level you have reached in your development, using three ranks: specialist, manager, director (intentionally inlowercase, because it’s the level, not the name of the position). Then add the business sector, type of company (e.g. in terms of size and/or ownership structure), geographical area + another parameter that you consider important for part number 4: the professional purpose.

Examples:

- I’m a sales director in FMCG, international corporations, responsible for the whole country

- I’m a quality manager in the automotive industry, in international and local Tier 1 companies, with exposure to 3 factories in Poland and Germany [we skip the wording "Tier 1" talking to people outside of business]

- I am a consultant in Executive Search, Leadership Development, and Personal Development in the EMEA area; I usually work with large companies.

Yes, I know that for a dozen years of career you have worked in various places. First, however, take a look at the book chapter mentioned above. And if you don't have it yet, take a quick look into part 4 of Elevator Pitch. Everything will become clear. It's supposed to be an essence. Your CV is the place to include all the details (also, carefully selected!).

The second part of the EP describes our professional experience in a nutshell. I can’t emphasize it enough: in a nutshell, not in picture puzzles, because that's what the CV is for. Here we provide key summed up numbers and key achievements, for example, I have 16 years of experience, 12 of which in managerial positions; I’ve managed teams of up to 120 people/turnover up to EUR 12 million; I am responsible for 4 countries; I’ve led 4 new product launches; I’ve conducted over 150 training sessions in 3 countries; I managed 15 projects lasting up to 1.5 years with budgets up to EUR 1.5 million, etc. etc. Add the relevant ones to your experience. Remove those which are not. Let me remind you - build simple short sentences. You can also adapt them wisely. For example, if your biggest team (say, 1,300 people) could be discouraging for smaller employers, although they are interesting to you, just sayI’ve managed teams of 50 to 1300 people. Use your intelligence. Choose the data that best supports your career goal, which you will present in part 4.

Pick the top two, three of your achievements, and briefly (simple short sentences!), based on facts and measurable effects, present them to the interlocutor on a silver platter. Measurable means, for example: For three years in a row I generated sales increases of 12-22%, while the market grew by 7%. The same thing, but presented in a wrong way: My sales increased significantly for several years. How to pick your achievements? It is very simple: with the professional goal that you will present in part 4. That is, you choose the achievements that best justify your right to the preferred career goal. Note: this means that the selection criterion is not "the greatest success", as it may be far from your goal and mean nothing in this context.

The third part of the EP is the simplest. We usually have three elements to choose from: basic higher education, additional MBA / postgraduate education, and any relevant ACCA, Six Sigma, PRINCE, CIMA, etc. certification. Our criterion for selection is predominantly our professional goal and supporting it with the diploma / certification, recognition and acknowledgement.

The fourth part of the EP is of utmost importance, so it has to be short and specific. How to write it? Let's start with how not to write it. Does the phrase I would like to develop using my extensive experience in management and optimization of production [sales, logistics, etc.] and work for the best mean anything? Or does I am looking for an interesting and challenging job in a dynamic environment? It’s pure Barnum. It matches anything, so all our effort is worthless. The reader will shrug his shoulders and... come up with were we can fit him. That means he will not support our plan but we will be a part of his picture puzzle.

The more precisely we call the function we are interested in (the nature of the company, business sector, location, ...), the greater the probability of success. The thinking here is the same as in the first part. For more details, again, do read my book. This time, take a look at the Career planning scenario chapter, which you will also find in the form of an article here: (LINK).

At this point, I am often asked about the specific purpose of this one sentence. Is it the long-term on a scale of about 10 years (my peak on the horizon), or the short-term, which is simply the next stage? Fortunately, the answer is simple. If someone is listening to you now, then it is in the context of their current recruitment or networking needs. For him, your long-term goal is irrelevant. Thus, we say about what is interesting for us now. And we leave to ourselves the information on the route this stage is a part of. Let’s not confuse the interlocutor.

Step 3 – When and how to use it

With the Elevator Pitch precisely constructed, we are very well prepared for many key occasions. It is this universality of applications that makes creating an entire communication package with the labour market worth starting from EP. The most important applications are:

- a meeting and a quick introduction - just the first sentence starting with "I am...". And this is the few seconds version,

- email / InMail contact (with a recruiter, a decision-maker, a networking contact) - the first and the last sentence, so I am... / My professional goal is... Additionally, the third sentence, like a call to action Let's connect, meet, make a call... And the fourth sentence informing about attaching the CV file. Four sentences, so there is a chance that the recipient will read it. If you write long messages in such situations, I can guarantee that nobody would read them and you vanish in non-existence (well, somewhere such a person may be found, but this is an exception, they must be bored at work...),

- a meeting with a recruiter - Elevator Pitch is the information that MUST be recorded in the recruiter's notes. Instead of being afraid of "Please tell me about yourself", which we boringly answer with our DOB, school, first job a hundred years ago, etc., we are looking forwardto it. Well, whatever they ask us at the beginning, we start with the EP anyway. Let me remind you – EP that is told, not recited, as if at school. You have to rehearse it. Later on, in the phase of talking about the details of our experience, we also need to make sure that the key information systematically reappears in the form of the same sentences and fragments. And at the end of the meeting, we will professionally and politely summarize them (!) with the EP. It’s no harm to say directly to the interlocutor that it is particularly important to remember this information? We have nothing to lose because of it. What’s more, we are radically increasing the chance that the interlocutor will write down and remember what we consider key in our description. Besides, if our interlocutor is a professional, they will appreciate our communication professionalism,

- CV and LinkedIn profile - the first and the last sentence (I am... / My professional goal is...) are compulsory elements in the first part of both documents, at the top, where the reader's eyes will reach. On the other hand, from the second part of the EP (My experience...), we build two shorter points quantifying our entire experience (numbers) and 2-3 key achievements. I’veexplained it in detail in the article How (not) to kill your CV? LINK. The convergence of fragments of both articles is not a coincidence.

The idea is to develop a consistent message regardless of where it is used. Do not make a fairly frequent mistake, which is reinventing the wheel every time; and a different one every time around, for that matter.Elevator