Pitching Skill Workshop: Perfect Your Elevator Pitch to Win Business
Now that we are all practising social isolation, this is an ideal time to communicate interestingly and engagingly, with lapsed clients or prospective new ones.
I have had occasions, both for my Aristo business and for several clients, to create a short email or LinkedIn message that can do one of two things;
- Remind people that you have not engaged with recently that you are still about!
- Introduce yourself to someone new and suggest that you may be helpful to them in some way.
Here’s my recommended template for this type of conversation.
Please note I said conversation; nobody, particularly in the current environment, wants to receive a sales pitch along the lines of:
This is me, I am great, our product is amazing, buy it now while stocks last!
My Elevator Pitch template is as follows:
Subject box:
Requires a headline that gets immediate attention and a click to open.
This is how newspaper headlines get your attention.
‘Headless Body found in Topless Bar’ – New York Times
‘Marijuana issue sent to Joint Committee’ – The Toronto Star
Open:
Open the conversation with a short story that explains very specifically the problem you solve for this person. (30 – 60 sec. to read)
Note: I said person, not organisation.
Stories need details to add colour and be memorable, your story also needs to be true, but not necessarily factually correct. Does it make the story less true, if it was twelve months ago and not six?
Now that you have the reader’s attention, they will ask themselves, who is this person?
You can now introduce yourself and your organization. (briefly)
Next:
Tell them what your product or service does for them. (also, briefly) E.g.:
- Our platform analyses the phone bills of large organizations and identifies significant opportunities for savings. We have some amazing stories of simple steps leading to huge savings, that you will find hard to believe.
- Based on our expertise and experience, we can reduce your energy bills by 30 to 40% annually.
- We design and manufacture, state of the art spray equipment for farmers who need to reduce their operation costs.
Bring the conversation to a conclusion:
By painting a word picture of how this person will be better after your intervention.
- The savings made on existing phone bills will allow you to upgrade your technology and improve your communication with clients and partners.
- The savings generated by reducing energy bills will provide funding to modernise plant and reduce downtime.
- Savings on the farm’s operational costs will allow you to produce more with less.
Call for action:
You have now held your reader’s attention for a couple of minutes.
What is your ASK?
- A meeting
- An opportunity to demo your product.
- If this is not your area of responsibility, can you suggest who I should contact?
Unless your ASK is clear and easy to achieve, nothing will happen.
Start writing today; while others are doing ‘Yoga in front of the TV’, you can be actively engaged in keeping your business to the forefront of the people you want to engage with.
“I was delighted with the way Andrew properly architected our message and helped create a compelling story to convey my message.
The most important aspect of presenting I have learned is the need to entertain while telling your story. The process of getting engagement is not something I ever thought about before working with Andrew”.
Alan Coleman CEO | www.britebill.com
