THE ELEVATOR PITCH

THE ELEVATOR PITCH

?Pitching your product in 60 seconds is hard. This is the elevator pitch we’re talking about.

In business, it’s your ability to capture your audience’s attention and get them interested in your offering (in a short period of time) that will dramatically impact your results over the course of your sales career.

?But what exactly makes up a perfect elevator pitch?

?Let’s look at the ingredients of a perfect pitch, tips, and elevator pitch examples that will help inspire your own.

What Exactly Is an Elevator Pitch? The elevator pitch has long been a part of the business.

It originates from Hollywood back in the day, when a screenwriter would try to catch an executive in an elevator ride and pitch them the “next big blockbuster.”

?Their spiel had to be quick enough to fit into an elevator ride, and it had to be compelling enough to get the executive’s attention in a matter of seconds.

?Today, the elevator pitch has evolved into a short summary and breakdown of what you do (whether that’s you or your business), the people you help, and what you help them do.

?Once you’ve got it, you can wheel it out during sales prospecting conversations, at networking events, or anywhere that you might come across a business opportunity (who knows, you might even get to wheel it out in an elevator!).

?So what are the ingredients of a good, fulfilling elevator pitch?

Elevator Pitch Top Tips

1. Keep It Short: The one part of the traditional elevator pitch that still stands today is the timing. It needs to be short and snappy – usually, somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds is enough to share all the information you need. Any longer, and you might see the recipient’s eyes start to glaze over.

?2. Make It Engaging: Speaking of eyes glazing over… you definitely don’t want your elevator pitch to bore anyone. That would completely defeat its purpose. You want it to be memorable, so inject a bit of personality and make it shine.

3. Keep It Structured! What makes your business and your offering different?

“I worked for this sales company for ten years… oh and I also went hiking in Machu Picchu where I met my business mentor… and before the sales company, I did something else…”

Sound familiar?

It’s difficult to create a compact statement covering everything. The key is to keep your elevator pitch structured. Split it into sections and try not to jump around too much – who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? What’s your value proposition?

?Here’s a simple template you can use to get started:

My name is [NAME], the CEO/Founder of [COMPANY]. We design and manufacture [PRODUCT/SERVICE] for [TARGET CUSTOMER] that allows them to [YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION]. We have [EXPERIENCE] and, unlike [COMPETITOR], we [DIFFERENCES]. [CALL TO ACTION].

?4. End with a Question or an Action??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????It can feel a bit like you’re talking at someone when you give your elevator pitch, so invite them to join in at the end. Ask them a question (“is this something you might need help with?”) or take an action – give them a business card or connect with them on LinkedIn.

?5. Practice

Practice makes perfect. The more you go over your elevator pitch, the easier it will become to reel it off in a confident way. Now that you know what goes into an effective pitch, let’s take a look at some elevator pitch examples that get buyers to take the next step.

?Irresistible Elevator Pitch Examples

The Validation Pitch: If your business or idea is new and innovative, it can be difficult to pitch its value if people don’t know they need it yet. This is where the validation pitch can help. It essentially links your brand and what you offer to other popular offerings that show there’s a need for it.

?The Airbnb pitch below addresses the issue with hotels, the common way to stay overnight when traveling, and shedding light on the accessibility of open houses and people willing to offer their places. This is where Airbnb presents its solution.

?2. The Pain Point Pitch

This kind of pitch is great for hooking the recipient right away. You’re essentially digging straight into a pain that they have and then presenting yourself or your brand as the solution.

The elevator pitch example below does just that – addressing the pain and frustration of reporting and offering a simple solution. Even better the pitch illustrates how the product works with one simple example.

?Let’s take a look:

“Every day, the average marketer spends half an hour putting together reports. Most of the time, these reports are barely glanced at — or worse, ignored altogether. Answer SAP, which stores all of your data from every tool your business uses, is a game-changer here. Just type what report you want: For example, ‘A bar chart of revenue from every lead source in the past month.’ You’ll get your report in 30 seconds.”

?3. The Benefits Pitch

One of the quickest ways to get someone to invest in what you’re selling them is to show them what they’ll get out of it.

Use your elevator pitch to highlight how your business or offering will save people money, time, or something else. It can really help to use numbers here if possible to illustrate your point.

The elevator pitch example below, from We, Work, does just that.

Let’s take a look at We Work’s pitch as an example:

?“There are 40MM independent workers in the US: consultants, freelancers, and small business owners. Solving office space is tough and expensive, especially in cities like New York. We created the concept of space as a service. We have 20 locations in the city- where people can rent a desk or an office without any of the complications of a traditional lease, effectively saving at least 25% of the cost. They get access to a shared front desk, mailroom, and a community of like-minded people.”

?4. The Personable Pitch

You want your pitch to be as personable as possible, with a human voice, and a relatable message.

Also, copywriting 101 teaches us that leading anything with a question instantly hooks the reader or listener. It invites them in and makes them feel like they’re a part of the action. This is why incorporating a question in your elevator pitch can be really effective.

?This elevator pitch below is by Matt Bremerkamp from Pressed, a time management app. The pitch is not only personable but asks a relatable question to the audience – drawing them in.

?Take a look:

“Pressed is an intelligent personal assistant designed to keep people focused on whatever goals they have; like working out, eating healthier, or even just drinking more water.

Want to run a 5k? Pressed will learn that your office isn’t the place to remind you to train. However, it may notice you’ve been at home for a while and may have the time to get out there and break a sweat.”?

5. The Take Action Pitch

Ideally, your elevator pitch should invite action in some way. This type of pitch is geared solely towards encouraging the recipient to do something specific once you’ve finished your spiel.

?The elevator pitch below from SEMrush brings in a sense of urgency and encouragement to go try their product out now.

?SEMrush has a great example of this:

“Understand your niche to make better marketing decisions, capture higher page rankings in Google, make valuable new connections and boost your earnings quickly. Don’t waste time guessing what it takes to win valuable search keywords. Work out who is winning. Find out who links to them. Build your own backlinks. Try it out. Research a website right now.”

?6. The Solutions-Focused Pitch

You don’t have to include everything about you or your business in an elevator pitch. In fact, it can sometimes be more effective to focus on one key problem your recipient might have and spin it around that. In the end, reveal how you can solve that problem.

This elevator pitch example does just that – this pitch centers on solving your problem – addressing the issue, bringing in the solution, and how to solve that problem.

?Just Park’s elevator pitch does this:

?“Let’s face it. Parking can be a real nightmare. It can be infuriating to find, extremely pricey and by the time you find that spot you would have lost time, petrol, and caused a lot of unnecessary traffic and pollution. Well, there’s an answer, parkatmyhouse.com. We are an awesome little company, backed by an awesome big company called BMW. Now, listen in: You can reserve parking on private property and save up to 70%. Need to park at a sports match or local station? Sorted. … Just go to parkatmyhouse.com and simply type in where you want to park and what dates. It is that simple.”

?Your Elevator Pitch Is Your First Impression

Your elevator pitch is often the first impression someone will have of you, your brand, or your offering. Getting it right can mean the difference between hooking someone right from the get-go or losing their attention completely.

?Based on these elevator pitch examples, play around with the different types of pitches to figure out which one suits what you’re offering best – and try it out on a few people, too. The most important thing to remember is to keep it short and engaging, but also ensure you highlight the value you offer and whom you offer it to.

Create a ‘before, during, and after’ plan: This is the time for you to assess your goals. Do you know where you stand exactly? Do you know where you’re planning to go with this, or how you’ll make it happen? As soon as possible, you need to sit down and create a ‘before, during, and after plan’. Let’s look at this a bit closer.

?Before

Right now is the moment before you implement your employee development plans. It’s when you need to set very specific goals about what you want to achieve by doing this. Personal development plans require a lot of time, investments, and constant measuring. It’s not a simple thing to do and, for it to yield actual results, you need to know what you’re striving to achieve.

?During

During is the period when you’re implementing your plans before they are completed. At this point, you will perform your testing, your training, and slowly help your team develop and grow. For this period, you need to figure out things like:

?Who’s going to cover shifts while your employees are in training?

Can they switch places or do you need extra people?

What type of training do you need for a specific employee? How much will it cost?

Can you train several employees at the same time/ with the same methods and achieve the desired effects?

You might not have all the answers at your disposal at the beginning, but at least set an outline, a base where you’ll enter your plan data afterward.

?After: This is when your development plans have already been implemented and the point where you should be able to see the results. When training concludes, you need to evaluate the employee’s development and growth and give them time and space to apply the new skills in their work.

?At this point, you need to plan for the opportunities you’ll give employees to use those new skills they’ve obtained. You also need to decide on which methods you’ll choose to track their performance – and reward them if they’re successful.

?Consider your business goals

You probably have many plans and dreams for your business, but how much of it is realistic? You need to base this on what you’ve learned about the abilities of your employees, as well as their potential.

?Sit down and do some brainstorming. Take each goal you have in mind and consider these things:

Does your team have what it takes to make it happen?

What do you need to offer or provide to them to make it possible?

Does your team have the potential to complete that goal?

How long will it take you to get them there?

Once you find the answers to these questions, brainstorm on possible action to add personal development plans that reflect your desired results i.e. objectives.

?Align the plans with employee goals

Transparency is important when you’re leading employees. By sharing your goals with them, you give them context to what they’re supposed to do, as well as what they’ll achieve thanks to the training and development. This can create better communication where you accomplish your business goals and they share their thoughts and ideas with you. Personal development plans are exactly that – personal. They shouldn’t solely be based on your business goals. If they are, chances are they won’t work with every employee.

?The reason why you’re implementing personal development plans is to help people grow based on their skills and potential. Once you identify which are their areas of need and make sure that your employees are interested in developing and growing, you can connect the dots.

Many plans fail because employees are not motivated enough or involved in the process. You need to figure out ways to motivate them to take on training and work on themselves. Whether you’ll use incentives like higher positions and salaries, rewards or praise, or make it mandatory,?it is up to you.

?Use plan templates to speed up the process

If you haven’t done this already, chances are it will be challenging to create employee development plans for every team member. Thankfully, there are many templates you can find online to speed up the process.

?For example, you can implement an individual development plan by using the Indeed template in the early stages. Or, you can plan for the succession of your organization by using a Smart sheet or Sigma Assessment Systems template.

?Make sure that the training fits the potential and the employee

Now that you’ve decided what your employees need and how you’ll handle the development, it’s time to figure out which methods you’ll use to implement it.

?Start with the type of training you will use. There are many methods of delivery that should be based on you and your employees’ goals. You can do coaching, mentoring, job shadowing, cross-training, microlearning, on-the-job training, and more.

?This is the time to decide what form your training will take for different employees. To make this simpler and smoother, you can use various tools to help you:

?Learning management systems (LMS)

LMS software gives you a workshop where you can combine your data and organize it into an intuitive learning plan. It’s a spot where your team can collaborate, learn, and test their knowledge. Some examples of this are Talentless and front.

Learning experience platforms (LXP)

?These are much alike LMSs, but they have a difference — they are designed for learners specifically, while LMSs are used to train managers and advanced employees. Any platform can provide a learning experience, starting with YouTube for videos and Netflix for work-related movies. And of course, you can go for LXP pioneers like EdCast and Path gather to make training engaging and fun.

Lastly, we shouldn’t forget about the modern way to do some training today, especially in a period when we’re dealing with limited contact (due to the pandemic). Today, video training is very popular. Companies all around the world use tools like Zoom and Join Me to provide their team with training.

?Start collaborating to build personal development plans

Well-planned and implemented personal development plans can mean everything for your business’ success and future. Not only will they help you mitigate unnecessary turnover, but they will help create a more engaged and healthy workplace culture. Identify opportunities to start building these personal development plans, tie them back to the core drivers of your business and make their implementation part of your monthly review process.

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