Developing Elevator Pitches

An elevator pitch should be a well-developed part of your sales portfolio. The basic idea is to have it polished and tucked away in the back of your mind ready for use in encounters with business prospects. You will then always be prepared to give a lucid two-minute talk about the unique advantages of your product or service. An elevator pitch can help you turn a chance meeting into a real sales opportunity.

ATTENTION SPANS

According to Wikipedia the attention span for short-term focused concentration can be as short as 8 seconds. “After a few seconds, it is likely that the person will look away, return to a previous task, or think about something else.” If you want to deliver an elevator pitch, you had better be ready to keep your prospect’s attention!

Your elevator pitch should be structured around five elements:

THE OPENER

This is a statement, not about your product, but about the problem it is meant to resolve. It must convince the prospects that it is worth their while to give you their time. It is intended to spark initial interest. You either grab them quickly or lose them forever. You must create the conceptual and emotional environment that will hold the interest of the prospect. To do so, be passionate. If you succeed, two things will stay with your audience: your enthusiasm and your message. The impression you make will be the impression your product makes.

THE KILLER STATEMENT

This part consists of stating your mission. This is a two-liner on the really critical facts about your product or service – how it is better (or different) than your competitors’ products. You must bring your audience to an immediate understanding of the scale and importance of your product.

THE DETAILS

I am not suggesting that you start explaining how your product works at the technical level. You should only hit the high points. Don’t even thing about cramming information into the 20 seconds that you have available. That will only get you a very confused audience. Strike a balance between clear information and detail. You should be able to do this in just a few sentences. Figure out what information matters to prospects and sing about it.

THE ENGAGEMENT QUESTION

Anticipate questions so that you can provide prospects with enough information to ensure that they will want to hear more. Every response should lead to an open-ended conversation that allows you to assess the prospect’s interest level. This should be a give-and-take conversation in which you want to push the prospect to initiate more questions. There is real added value to this process. You will probably learn something useful about the prospects and their needs. And hopefully, the ensuing conversation will allow you to pre-qualify the prospect so you know whether or not it makes sense to continue the pitch. Secondly, the ensuing conversation helps build this casual relationship to the point where it’s acceptable for you to ask for a “real” sales meeting to discuss the matter further.

THE CALL TO ACTION

End strong. Make sure you end by restating the problem and the ultimate value of your solution, your capabilities and potential. Then set the stage for their follow up by challenging your audience to look closer at your company and the benefits you can give them. At this point, suggest a meeting to discuss the matter further. The point of an elevator pitch is, of course, to generate a potential opportunity. And, for that to happen, you need to get an appointment for a follow-up meeting.