Essential Elements and Steps to Developing a Killer Elevator Pitch

Have you ever had to explain something really quickly and just stumbled over your words not prepared? Well the concept of an elevator pitch is not new and actually came from the concept of a sales person riding up the elevator with a prospect in an elevator which takes from 30-60 seconds. These days everyone has limited time and if you are at a networking event and do get someone with the chance to invest or buy your product/service they will in so many words ask “what do you do” or be direct and say “give me your elevator pitch”. It is partly a test to see if you know your business and have enough focus to get to the point quickly and the other part is to find out what you do and why they should work with you.

So What Are the Essential Elements of a Killer Elevator Pitch

• Be Clear and Concise – No one needs to hear how well you use fancy words or buzz words. They don’t make you look smarter they really make the customer feel stupid. Like we said before, keep it to 30-60 seconds long.
• Be Visual and Tell a Story – Use powerful words that create a visual image in your listeners mind. Build on that with a story can clearly illustrate what you do and connect to the customer.
• Be Relevant – Find words and phrases that get their attention but are relevant to your audience.
• Be Targeted – Killer elevator pitches are targeted at specific audiences. Have different pitches for different target audiences.
• Be Goal Oriented – Start with the end in mind because different pitches have different objectives and if you can hook some one from the beginning with the bottom line, you can explain how you achieve this for them.

What Are the Steps to Develop a Killer Elevator Pitch

1. Start Writing and Don’t Stop – Since we have covered the elements, it is time to start writing. The best way to do this is to write a very short story that illustrates what you do for customers. There is no time or size limit here because you need to get it all out. Think of it like business vision therapy. Just let it all out. After your first attempt, start trying to write it different ways. Like 10-20 different ways and don’t edit it yet.
2. Start with a new sheet of paper and write down your objective or goal – What do you want this elevator pitch to do? Make a sale, develop a prospect, gain support for an idea, get a referral?
3. Write action statements for that objective or goal – Take the statement and write 10-20 actions that are associated with this goal.
4. Highlight the good stuff – Highlight or circle the phrases that hook you with clear, powerful, and visual words. Tell us what you do and why people should want to do business with you. You still need connector words, but you want them to be as few as possible.
5. Edit and cut as many words as possible – Cut and rearrange words/phrases until it sounds just right. This is where you need to start working on the 30-60 second time limit.
6. Test it with friends – Take this elevator pitch and give it to as many people as you can get to listen to you. Get feedback from colleagues, clients you trust, friends and family.
7. Take your final elevator pitch and practice until memorized – Memorize and practice it until it just slides off your tongue naturally.
8. Always Be Tuning – This is not an endless thing, but you should always be aware of things you think could give your elevator pitch more impact and clarity.

You Are Ready, Now What?

If you want to be public about it you can submit it to a place like Vator.TV or TechCruch pitches. If you still want to practice ask friends or business colleagues to let you pitch it and see if they not only understand it but agree that it aligns with what you do. Once you are more confident, ask current customers to listen to your refined pitch. I recommend that you only ask those you trust and that you preface that you are trying to focus better and are listening to customers and want to make sure that what you heard is right.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs, Raising Capital, Resources, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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