Here are some succinct directions from freely shared online sources- Some ‘How-To’s’ that well help enable you to network your way to viral status!
What is an Elevator Pitch?
This is the 30-60 second business description of what you do and why someone should work with you.
It’s called an “Elevator Pitch” because it describes the challenge: “How would you explain your business and make a sale if fate placed you in an elevator with your dream prospect and you only had the time it takes to get from the top of the building to the
bottom?”
Who are you?
What are you seeking?
After you’ve explained to your new networking contact who you are, it’s important to communicate what you’re seeking.
What can you offer?
It’s not enough to be looking for a job, client, etc. You have to offer something of value in return. This is often called your unique selling proposition (USP).
Request action
Sure, you said what you’re seeking, but you should be explicit with your networking contact about the next step in this new relationship.
K.I.S.S.
Keep it simple and short. Your elevator pitch should be no longer than 60 seconds. After all, (1) you don’t want to bore the other individual and (2) you want to hear his/her story, too! Networking is a two-way, mutually beneficial relationship.
Why Is Having an Elevator Pitch So Important?
You only have 30-60 seconds to make a powerful first impression. The attention span of the average person is just 30 seconds before their mind starts wandering. The other reason is people have less time today. You need to grab them quickly or lose them forever.
Essential Elements of a Powerful Elevator Pitch
- Concise. Your pitch should take no longer than 30-60 seconds.
- Clear. Use language that everyone understands. Don’t use fancy words thinking it will make you sound smarter. Your listener won’t understand you and you’ll have lost your opportunity to hook them.
- Powerful. Use words that are powerful and strong. Deliver the “Sis-Boom-Bang” to grab their attention!
- Visual. Use words that create a visual image in your listeners mind. This will make your message memorable.
- Tell a Story. A short story, that is. A good story is essentially this: someone with a problem either finds a solution or faces tragedy. Either type of story can be used to illuminate what you do.
- Targeted. A great elevator pitch is aimed for a specific audience. If you have target audiences that are vastly different, you might want to have a unique pitch for each.
- Goal Oriented. A kick-ass elevator pitch is designed with a specific outcome in mind. What is your desired outcome? You may have different pitches depending on different objectives. For instance do you want to: make a sale, gain a prospect, enlist support for an idea, or earn a referral.
- Has a Hook. This is the element that literally snags your listener’s interest and makes them want to know more. This is the phrase or words that strike a chord in your listener.
How to Craft Your Killer Elevator Pitch
- Write down what you do. Write it several different ways. Try writing it at least 10-20 different ways. Don’t edit yourself at all. You will edit later. This first step is for generating ideas. Don’t hold back. Ideas can be goofy, serious, wild, funny, or conservative. It doesn’t matter. The goal is to get at many ideas as possible down on paper.
- Write a very short story that illustrates what you do for people. If necessary, the story can be long. You will boil it down later. Paint a picture with words.
- Write down your objective or goal. Do you want to make a sale, gain a prospect, enlist support for an idea, earn a referral, or something else?
- Write 10-20 action statements. This is a statement or question designed to spur the action associated with your goal.
- Record yourself. You can use Jott if you don’t have a recording device. Jott is a free phone based service that translates your messages into text as well as providing an online link to the original audio.
- Let it sit. Come back to what you’ve written with fresh eyes and ears the next day or later on in the same day.
- Highlight the good stuff. Listen and read through what you’ve recorded and written. Then either highlight or circle the phrases that hook you with clear, powerful, and visual words. Obviously not all the words will fall into these categories. You still need connector words, but you want them to be as few as possible.
- Put the best pieces together. Again you’ll want to write down several versions of this much tighter pitch. Tell us what you do and why people should want to do business with you. Include elements from your story if you can fit it in.
- Record these new ones.
- Do a final edit cutting as many unnecessary words as possible. Rearrange words and phrases until it sounds just right. Again, the goal is 30-60 seconds maximum.
- Dress Rehearsal. Run it by as many people as you can get to listen to you. Get feedback from colleagues, clients you trust, friends and family.
- Done for now. Take your final elevator pitch and write it down. Memorize and practice it until it just slides off your tongue naturally.
- Continue to improve. Over time, always be on the listen for phrases that you think could make your elevator pitch more clear and impactful. And then test it out. Every once in a while you will probably benefit by starting from scratch because things always change: you, your business, your goals, and your clients’ needs.
What your “Elevator Pitch” must contain:
- A “hook”
Open your pitch by getting the Investor’s attention with a “hook.” A statement or question that piques their interest to want to hear more. - About 150-225 words
Your pitch should go no longer than 60 seconds. - Passion
Investors expect energy and dedication from entrepreneurs. - A request
At the end of your pitch, you must ask for something. Do you want their business card, to schedule a full presentation, to ask for a referral?
That, my friends, is the elevator pitch. It is a 30- to 60-second business description of what you do and why someone should work with you.
If you want that investment or that job, you need the right message. In order to craft the right message, you need insight from people who have both listened to and delivered their share of pitches.
You’ve got to believe. We’ve talked about being concise, clear and compelling. Here’s another “C” word for you: conviction. You won’t get very far if you are not passionate about what you’re pitching. You need to believe – really believe.
Tell a story. Entrepreneurs learn that a strong pitch requires that you articulate three things: the problem that is out there in the marketplace, how your product will solve that problem and how solving that problem is going to make money for investors. You could easily get mired in lots of industry jargon and statistics with a pitch like that. Stories, however, help to make your pitch compelling. How can you quickly illustrate your idea through a story?
A good entrepreneur must be able to tell a story to sell their vision.
Pitch with Purpose. When you’re crafting your elevator pitch (and practicing it over and over again to perfect the delivery), you are focused on making sure that it meets the necessary criteria: No longer than 30-60 seconds – check. Clear and powerful with language that is easy to understand, yet strong – check. Tells a story – check. Has a hook that grabs the listener – check. But don’t let your own goals get lost in the process. Remember that you are giving this pitch for a reason, whether you want money, a new job or whatever. State clearly the size of the investment you are hoping to attract or exactly what type of job you wish to land. Be specific about what you hope to get from your elevator mate.
After all, the worst they can say is no.
Every new chance to give your pitch strengthens your message and puts you one step closer to success.
Creating S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely
Specific: A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions:
*Who: Who is involved?
*What: What do I want to accomplish?
*Where: Identify a location.
*When: Establish a time frame.
*Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
*Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.
EXAMPLE: A general goal would be, “Get in shape.” But a specific goal would say, “Join a health club and workout 3 days a week.”
Measurable – Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.
When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.
To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as……
How much? How many?
How will I know when it is accomplished?
Attainable – When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.
You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them.
Realistic– To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are bothwilling and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be. But be sure that every goal represents substantial progress.
A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually seem easy simply because they were a labor of love.
Timely – A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency. If you want to lose 10 lbs, when do you want to lose it by? “Someday” won’t work. But if you anchor it within a timeframe, “by May 1st”, then you’ve set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal. Your goal is probably realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished anything similar in the past or ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal.
T can also stand for Tangible – A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses, that is, taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing.
When your goal is tangible you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus attainable.
Using the Star technique to shine at job interviews: a how-to guide
The Star acronym allows you to structure your response to competency-based questions.
There are many types of interviews , from the free flowing to the formal, but one that you are likely to come up against at some point is the competency-based interview.
They’re designed to make the job application process as objective as possible, removing any conscious or subconscious bias by the interviewer by asking each candidate the same questions. Some people feel this type of interview is more stilted – there can be less opportunity to build rapport. However, they are very common, especially in large organizations and the public sector, so it’s worth refining your technique.
The questions will be driven by a competency framework that’s required for the job. For example, a marketing executive may require problem-solving skills, or a job in customer services may require conflict management skills.
The interview questions tend to start with a variation of, “Tell me about a time when…” This may sound simple but, in the heat of the interview, it’s easy to give an unstructured answer, miss out key details, or let the story peter to a halt.
One way of avoiding this is by using the Star acronym to structure your response. Here are two examples of how to implement the technique:
A candidate for a marketing executive role might be asked: “Tell me about a time that you solved a problem to a tight timescale.” Here’s how you could structure your response:
• Situation – set the context for your story. For example, “We were due to be delivering a presentation to a group of 30 interested industry players on our new product and Stuart, the guy due to deliver it, got stuck on a train from Birmingham.”
• Task – what was required of you. For example, “It was my responsibility to find an alternative so it didn’t reflect badly on the company and we didn’t waste the opportunity.”
• Activity – what you actually did. For example, “I spoke to the event organizers to find out if they could change the running order. They agreed so we bought ourselves some time. I contacted Susan, another member of the team, who at a push could step in. She agreed to drop what she was doing and head to the event.”
• Result – how well the situation played out. For example, “Stuart didn’t make the meeting on time but we explained the problem to the delegates and Susan’s presentation went well – a bit rough around the edges but it was warmly received. Stuart managed to get there for the last 15 minutes to answer questions. As a result we gained some good contacts, at least two of which we converted into paying clients.”
There are a few things to note with this response: it’s important to speak in specific rather than general terms and quantify your success. In this example, we mentioned 30 delegates, the names of the people involved and quantified two contacts converted to clients. From a listener’s perspective, this makes the story more interesting and they are more able to gauge your success. Nameless figures and undefined successes can make the answer less feel less convincing. Secondly, as there are likely to be many questions and interviewers have short attention spans, it’s important to keep your answers concise: convey the maximum achievement in the minimum time. Finally, it’s important to finish on a positive note so the overall impression is strong.
In a second example, a candidate for a customer services role is asked: “Describe a situation when you had to deliver excellent customer service following a complaint”
• Situation: “A customer rang up complaining that they’d waited more than two weeks for a reply from our sales team regarding a product query.”
• Task: “I needed to address the client’s immediate query and find out what went wrong in the normal process.”
• Activity: “I apologized, got the details and passed them to our head salesperson, who contacted the client within the hour. I investigated why the query hadn’t been answered. I discovered that it was a combination of a wrong mobile number and a generic email address that wasn’t being checked. I let the client know and we offered a goodwill discount on her next order.”
• Result: “The client not only continued to order from us but posted a positive customer service tweet.”
Used at its best, the Star structure is invisible to the listener and it simply comes across as a well-articulated example. Create a bank of answers in this format in advance, so don’t struggle to do it on the day and can make it appear as seamless as possible.