You’re at a networking event—or the grocery store or a conference—and you bump into a prospect.  After you exchange pleasant greetings and business cards, your prospect asks you about your business.  You open your mouth to answer, but your mind races, thinking “If I’ve only got seconds to respond, where on earth do I start?”

These circumstances call for a crafty ‘elevator speech’: a brief, prepared speech that rolls effortlessly off your tongue, succinctly explains what your business does, and leaves the other person wanting to know more.  It should last no longer than 20-30 seconds, like an elevator ride, which is how this kind of pitch got its name.

Follow these steps to create a compelling elevator speech of your own.  Use the exercise file for more help.

Determine the goal of your speech – If you want to get to the point, you must have a point to get to.  You must pick one thing that you’d like to accomplish with the elevator pitch.  Do you have an exciting new product you want to hone in on?  Do you want to tell your prospect what you do for a living, or tell them about the company itself?

Example: To entice people to contact me for information on how they can increase sales and lower expenses by learning about my rich relationship techniques for business and in the workplace.

Define What You Do – Start your pitch by describing what your organization does, the problems that it solves, and how this benefits your clients.  If you can, include a statistic to assist with the value of your product, service or business.

Example: The Tremblay Leadership Center specializes in leadership training and relationship management.   It costs one and a half times an annual salary to replace a good employee, and it’s far more cost-effective to maintain existing customers than to find new ones, so rich relationships mean more money.

Before you begin drafting your speech, ask yourself how you want people to remember you.  You don’t have much time to hook into someone’s mind in order for your pitch to stick, so if there’s just one thing that you’d like to be remembered by, it’s likely that your audience will remember it.  If there are too many things, your signal may become lost in the noise.

Also, make sure that what you’re creating excites you first.  If you’re not lit up with enthusiasm by your idea and your speech, then your audience won’t be either.

Convey Your Uniqueness – What makes you better than the competition?  What makes your product or service unique, and how does that benefit people?  You’re going to want to stand out above the crowd of other people that could be offering similar products and services.

Example: I customize programs to assist people with taking responsibility for making critical relationships work, and I provide tools to help them maintain positive, productive and profitable allies.

End With A Question – When all is said and done, more is said than done … unless you’ve got an opportunity to enroll the person into your conversation.  Therefore, end with a leading question that encourages your audience to discuss and inquire about your business.

Example: How can I help you create rich relationships?

Now that you’ve created each section of your elevator speech, put it all together and use a timer to see if it fits into a 20-30 second timeframe.  If not, pare it down.  As the ancient Chinese proverb says, “Less is more.”  People will remember small, memorable bits.  Long, run-on information is just too overwhelming.  Practice, practice, and practice your pitch some more, and see how it works.  If your elevator speech isn’t leaving people wanting more, then you need to change it up.

Here’s a complete example of an elevator speech that I’ve drafted:

The Tremblay Leadership Center specializes in leadership training and relationship management.  I customize programs to assist people with taking responsibility for making critical relationships work and I provide tools to help them maintain positive, productive and profitable allies.  It costs one and a half times an annual salary to replace a good employee, and it’s far more cost-effective to maintain existing customers than to find new ones, so rich relationships mean more money. How can I help you create rich relationships?

If it’s too long, or too boring, you’ll want to spice it up.  See how this version compares to the one previous:

I help people learn to play nice in the sandbox.  Within a workplace, or in any business, relationships are the glue that holds people together.  I meet with people and businesses of all types and help them achieve more sales and fewer expenses.  Did you know it costs one and a half times a good employee’s salary to replace them?  And what’s a customer worth to business?  Lots!  So rich relationships mean more money.  How can I help you make more money?

There you have it!  A compelling elevator speech that’s just 27 seconds long, and I’m smiling when I say it because I think it’s fit, fun, funny, and fabulous … just like me!  If you need some help, contact me.

Use our Elevator Speech exercise file to create one for your business.

Consider Speaking With Confidence – Deliver Powerful, Productive and Profitable Presentations, by Penny Tremblay

Join a Toastmaster Club in your area to learn effective ways to have structured speeches that deliver greater impact in fewer words.