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Is Your Elevator Pitch a Monologue or a Dialogue?

Written by: Jay Hamilton-Roth

Article Overview: When most people think “elevator pitch”, they think of a paragraph that they can utter in about 15 seconds that tells people what they do. I’ve written previous articles on "how to craft a pitch" and "how to judge your pitch’s effectiveness". But what most people forget is the goal of the elevator pitch - to start a dialogue.

Is Your Elevator Pitch a Monologue or a Dialogue?

When most people think “elevator pitch”, they think of a paragraph that they can utter in about 15 seconds that tells people what they do. I’ve written previous articles on "how to craft a pitch" and "how to judge your pitch’s effectiveness". But what most people forget is the goal of the elevator pitch - to start a dialogue.

Let’s say I’m at a mixer, and I ask the person standing next to me what they do for a living. They respond with their elevator pitch. And unless it’s a great pitch, it’s likely that I’ve tuned them out. Why? Because they didn’t tailor their pitch to me.

In all your marketing communication, you need to ensure the message matches your target’s needs. If you don’t know their needs, all you can do is talk at them, and hope that the message somehow “sticks”.

How can you create an elevator pitch that’s memorable? Start slowly. Describe who you target clearly and a single benefit you provide. For example, I’d say: “I help small businesses around the world make more money.” In this simple sentence, I’ve identified my target audience (small businesses), where they are located (around the world), and a single benefit (make more money). Notice I also put in clear clues to help the listener to see if their problems fit my business offerings (this helps the listener frame the dialogue better). Instead of adding any more to the pitch, I now wait for the inevitable question, “How do you make more money?” (I could loan money, steal money, print money, or provide services).

My next sentence is a bit more specific: “I plan and implement creative marketing strategies.” Perhaps they’ll hear the word marketing or creative or strategies. It doesn’t matter much, because I immediately follow up my answer with a question, “What’s your #1 business problem?”

I’ve just created a dialogue around a prospect’s business. The more I find out, the better I can now talk about how my offerings can help their business (or not). The result is a memorable message that’s tailored to my prospect’s needs.

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Article Tags: benefit, business offerings, business problem, creative marketing, dialogue, elevator pitch, inevitable question, listener, marketing communication, marketing strategies, mixer, money, paragraph, rsquo, simple sentence, small businesses, target audience, word marketing



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Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ - Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed Ronna Lichtenberg 2005 From the inside cover: "As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want." WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype. However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen... Anyway, more of the info from the jacket: "Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work." The TOC: 1. Pink and Blue 2. The Quck-dry Chapter 3. What's In your head that's not in his 4. The Me, Inc Mindset 5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want 6. Identifying Prospects 7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork 8. Crafting the pitch 9. Pricing the pitch 10. Packaging the pitch 11. Delivering the pitch 12. Closing Conclusion A Word to the guys The Empathy Quotient The Systemizing Quotient Bibliography And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.
Why women don't charge more - I just read a chapter in Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed, by Ronna Lichtenberg that deals with this. THe chapter is called Pricing the Pitch. "In a WAll Street Journal article about what might be holding women back from corporate success, Terry Dal, a former vice president at Wells Fargo bank, said, "Good girls don't advertise; only prostitutes advertise. We feel dirty promoting ourselves." The author's advice: The first step in getting the money you desserve is to understand the market rate for your offering. Not what you think you need, not what they're willing to pay, but the going rate for similar goods and services offered in your area by someone with your skills and experience. Then, seek expert advice. "Men routinely consult lawyers, financial advisers, exxecutive recruiters and any other paid counselors to help them assess what constitutes a fair fee." Your research into going rates should not lead you to a single price for your pitch but rather a range of prices - both a market range and a personal range, which should overlap but won't necessarily be identical. In pricing, one size does not fit all. The final step in determining your price is to consider what you think you'd be paid for the same job if you were a man. The author also discusses why women usually discount their prices (must'n't appear too over-confident), the difference between discounting and "giving a discount", and other issues. I'd advise every woman wondering about what to charge to read at least this chapter of the book.
Facebook and Business - While on the Elevator today I read that MySpace and Facebook are surpassing adult-sites in traffic volumes - just thought that was interesting fact. As far as your business is concerned I think that having a Facebook account is viable as long as you keep it business and the most important thing to increase your traffic would be to link up with people well-known in your business-circle. e.g. if your were in the Marketing Business Circle I would link up with people like Dan Kennedy, Mike Filsame, Yanik Silver etc. People linked up with them will now start pouring into your content.
Books for Women Entrepreneurs - There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here. It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new. In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment! 1. The Old Girl's Network 2. Mother's Work 3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women 4. Pitch Like A Girl 5. Workplace Warrior 6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer 7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery 8. She Wins, You Win 9. Napoleon On Project Management 10. Why Good Girls Dont' Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do 11. Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years 12. The One Minute Millionaire 13. Talking From 9 to 5 14. Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions 15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success 16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded 17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful 18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End 19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide 20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen 21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business 22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker 23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business 24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises 25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy 26. The Promotable Woman 27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it 28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home 29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women


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