How do you answer the question, “What does your business do?”
While it may seem like a simple question, there often is not a simple answer. So you start a business and you have products or services that you sell, customers you serve, industries you work in and the problems you solve. That’s just the basics. You can add to that answer by talking about where you’re located, how many employees you employed when you were founded and your role.
It’s a lot of possible content to include in the answer to a seemingly easy question. It can cause too many entrepreneurs to stumble if they don’t have a clear, concise and compelling answer. That’s the magic of the elevator pitch.
Let’s take a closer look at what an elevator pitch is and how to craft one that’s effective.
What Is an Elevator Pitch?
The elevator pitch, also known as the elevator speech, is colloquially defined as the answer you can give in the time it takes an elevator to bring you to your floor. It is, by design, brief, memorable and can be communicated in a few seconds.
The ideal length for an elevator pitch varies, with experts recommending a length of between 10 seconds and a minute. No matter what the length, the emphasis is on the brief in order to get the message out before your audience moves on.
The power of an elevator pitch is the ability to be enticing. It should leave the listener feeling as though they know the general gist of your company and be intrigued to want to learn more.
The elevator pitch, however, is about more than just brief rides in a metal tube. It’s also the tool you can use in pitch meetings looking for investors, employees or customers. While the version may differ depending on the setting and the audience, the core of the pitch should remain the same.
Here are a few things that an elevator pitch is not:
- A retelling of your life story or the history of your business
- An overt request for funding
- A sales pitch
- Unclear or confusing
Why Is an Elevator Pitch Important?
Today. We are all distracted, with many items competing for our time, energy and attention. We need to be drawn into an idea, a concept or a frame in order to move on.
The elevator pitch is designed to be crisp, sharing with the listener with the most salient information that makes them want more.
Here are some of the most essential reasons why having an elevator pitch can mean so much to your business.
Organising Your Thoughts
There is so much that goes into your business. If you’re the founder, it goes beyond the facts and figures; it’s personal and a part of you.
That’s why developing an elevator pitch is so important. It helps to frame and focus your thoughts around the most important ideas. It also prevents you from adding that “one more thing” unless the situation calls for it.
At the end of the work to develop your elevator pitch, you’ll have a well-constructed speech that you can use to deliver what are the most essential things that need to be conveyed.
Exciting the Audience
Working hard on an elevator pitch has many concrete rewards. One of the most powerful ones is the ability to frame your business in a way that’s exciting and engaging for listeners. The process of building your pitch results in a way you can story-tell in a new way. You want people to come away with a “Wow” factor and the elevator pitch helps you do so.
Defining Your Market, Your Position and Your Niche
When you’re looking to attract investors and customers, you need to concretely define the market space you expect to occupy. Where will you sell and how? The pitch lets you identify those details and flesh them out, placing them in the context of your broader message.
What position will you hold in the market and what differentiates you from your competitors? The answers to these questions will also help flesh out the pitch, giving it fullness and context.
Becoming a Storyteller
Everyone loves a good story. You want to be sure the story you tell about your company is a good one. The exercise of developing an elevator pitch lets you become a better storyteller and more confident in your company’s narrative.
Being Prepared
Whether you’re at a business networking event, conference, friend’s wedding or, well, in an elevator, you want to be at the ready. You never know when it will help to have a brief conversation with someone, exchange business cards, and potentially launch a new relationship. Having your pitch defined, refined and ready is invaluable.
Knowing what an elevator is and why it’s important are the first two steps on the journey of creation. Next, we’ll look into how to develop your own elevator pitch.
How to Create an Elevator Pitch
There are many templates available online to guide you in the development of your elevator pitch. Each one will take you step-by-step through the process, helping you clarify your thoughts and articulate the key points. Here are the basic steps to take when creating your unique elevator pitch.
Define Your Goal
What do you want your business to achieve? It can be a financial goal but is usually more compelling when the goal talks about the change your products or services make.
Let’s imagine, for example, that your company makes a widget to radically alter how snowmen are made. Your goal statement could be something like, “We make widgets that create snowmen and snowwomen of all sizes with perfectly shaped snowballs, changing the way kids of all ages play and have fun.”
Develop the Fundamentals
You need to have answers to some core questions about your business to write a cohesive elevator pitch. Those questions include:
- What your company does, e.g. “We offer” or “We provide” statements
- Who your company serves (your audience segments, such as by age – teens, children, adults – interest, such as golfers, game players or musicians – or other businesses, candle manufacturers or cities looking for garbage trucks
- What benefits do you provide, such as more reliability, lower unit cost, higher quality, more colours
- In which sector your business operates, whether it be restaurant supplies or rocket ships
Again, taking our example, the answers to those questions may be:
- We provide high-quality tools to help build snowpeople
- We primarily serve children and adults who want to make winter fun and play with their kids
- We offer a new product that has never been offered that makes it easier to build with snow
- We operate in the toys, outdoor recreation and holiday spaces
Put It Together
Taking the core answers to the above questions, combined with your goal statement, it’s time to edit. Take the best, most relevant information and try to get it down to 35 to 50 words. Here’s one possibility for using the widget example.
“We offer a widget that’s never been offered before that lets kids and adults alike build better snowpeople. This tool builds a perfectly shaped snowball of any size, letting you create snowmen and snowwomen of any size easily. We are reimagining this time-honoured activity with long-lasting snowpeople everyone will love.”
Review, Refine and Practice
The best way to develop the elevator pitch is to take that first draft and revise it. Let others take a look and see if you’ve captured the points well.
When you’ve got it refined, practice saying it out loud – to employees, to friends and to family. See if they can repeat it back to you, remembering the points you feel are most important. Give them the chance to give you constructive criticism on how it’s said out loud, and change it again if necessary.
For the entrepreneur, the elevator pitch is a great piece of in-the-moment marketing. It lets you articulate what you want to achieve and how you will get there. When it’s right, it will become an important part of your company’s essence and you’ll find you use it daily.
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Article by Pankaj Shah: DCP Web Design Greenwich
