There are no magical short cuts to the top in small business. But a killer elevator pitch can expedite the trip.
Your elevator pitch is the concise statement of the value you provide to your customers. When a prospect hears it, it has to grab their attention, and make real for them the benefits that you can deliver to their business or life.
When it really works, your elevator pitch will engage your prospect so that they want to hear more. You know it’s working when they say in response, “How do you do that?”
Now the door is open to continue the conversation, engage further with the prospect, and possibly convert them into your newest client.
How do you craft a statement like that? There’s a bit of homework involved before you sit down to write.
Start by putting yourself in the shoes of your prospect. And not just any prospect, but the one who is perfect for you. That would be the one who, upon becoming a customer is going to:
- Love what you do for them
- Come back again and again
- Not require a high level of maintenance
- Pay on time
- Refer others to you
You’re speaking directly to this person, so you want to know all about them:
- What challenges they face
- What concerns they have
- What unmet need you could fulfill for them
- The language they use to talk about their issues and concerns
You can try to intuit this things on your own. But unless you’re an accomplished mind-reader, you would do well to interview your existing customers.
Ask them what they like most about your product or service. Ask them what other products and services they like. Find out what kind of car they drive and where they live. Really get to know them — and focus your attention on the problem you solve for them.
How does it feel to face that problem? And how does it feel to finally have it resolved?
Now you’re ready to write your pitch. My best advice for this part is to:
- Omit needless words (per Strunk and White)
- Be brief. Everyone is time-challenged.
- Write in the active voice.
- To get it right, be prepared to revise it dozens of times. No one is brilliant in the first draft.
Once you’ve got it down on paper, settle on two or three finalists. Run these draft elevator pitches past people you trust. Ask if it works for them — if it really gets to the essence of your business. Decide on a winner, and then start using it in all of your marketing materials, over and over, until everyone knows what your business stands for.
This is how you build mind-share — and market share.
Have you ever met a salesperson who seems compelled to present an entire dog-and-pony show
to everyone they meet? They’ve been schooled to:
- Establish rapport, which can take forever. (“Hasn’t this weather been something?’)
- Anticipate and disarm your objections. (“You can’t afford not to own a deluxe Salad Shooter!”)
- Keep the conversation going for as long as possible before disclosing to you the one thing you really want to know – the price.
I actually like to converse, to get to know someone, and to find out about a solution to a problem. In other words, like most people, I like being sold to.
The deal-killer for me is when someone acts like their time is more valuable than your time. That feels like an insult.
And feeling insulted pushes my “I’m not buying” button.
If you’re in sales, how do you avoid this? I’m not entirely sure, but how about some common courtesy? How about abandoning the script and actually listening to a person, reading their body language, changing course, and when necessary, giving up.
Sometimes you can save a lot of time and energy when you realize that your ideal client is not in front of you. That’s when you stop talking, cut your losses and move on.
Is that so hard?
“… many experts in the art of self-marketing agree that the rapid rise over the last five years of Internet-based social networking sites is a game-changer. Such sites allow like-minded people to forge connections, not just at lunch, but across the country or even overseas, leading to unprecedented opportunities for ambitious people to expand their list of contacts, generate business leads or even develop a new career.”
- Advertising Yourself: Building a Personal Brand Through Social Networks, Knowledge@Wharton
The word is out: There’s a lot to be gained by establishing an online presence for your business. But where do you start?
One week Facebook is hot, and the next week Twitter is all the rage. Are podcasts still a good idea? What about MySpace? Not to mention the couple dozen traditional media channels, from direct mail to radio and TV spots.
Here’s a good way to think about it. My colleague Kevin Popovic at Ideahaus Communications has developed the concept of Satellite Marketing(TM).
As you might infer, this involves setting up a core presence (your Web site) and then using the various other messaging and presentation technologies (from Twitter to PowerPoint to everything in between, and things beyond) to connect with your audiences, wherever they are, so that you can proactively:
- Manage your reputation.
- Present your products and services.
- Stay in touch with your clients and prospects.
- Build your network.
- Grow your business faster.
What I like about this approach is that it allows you to integrate and orchestrate your media messaging as much (or as little) as you want.
Whether you’re already up to your neck in social media, or just wading into the pool, this is a method for strategizing and executing your social media efforts, so that you’re not just wasting time, but generating positive results for your business.
Check it out — Kevin explains Satellite Marketing in more detail here.
“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup…”
When they first hear about Twitter and the prospect of sending 140-character messages out, most people go, “Why the hell would I want to do that?”
After you play with it for a while you begin to get Twitter: It’s your own channel, to which you may invite whomever you want.
So what kind of bite-sized programming would you put on your own 140-character- at-a-time channel?
If, for instance, you are:
- One of the millions who have lost their jobs in the last few years
- Running a business that’s stuck or not growing as fast as you’d like
- Someone who understands the power of having a network and a personal brand
Then you probably see how Twitter could become an effective tool.
A lot of people using Twitter are following (or have following them) a ridiculous number of people. Once you get past 20 or so, it’s like watching channels on TV — you have to make choices. It’s just not possible to stay current with every station.
Life is a series of choices. And just about every day, you come into a situation where you want people to choose you.
To achieve the result you want, you need to convince them of the superiority of:
- The great idea you have
- The phenomenal product you’ve developed
- The awesome service you provide
You’re in sales, in other words. We all are. Every sale requires the ability to convince your audience to take the next step. This is marketing, and we’re all in that too. And persuasive copy is the foundation of effective marketing.
My point is, you need to know how to write.
Not like Shakespeare, but with a basic level of competence. Even if all you’re writing is Craigslist ads, you need to know how to persuade with the written word. And if you are running your own business today, it’s absolutely mandatory that you be able to reach people and convince them with clear and compelling language.
The problem is that for many people, sitting down to write is as much fun as taking a seat in the dentist’s chair. But writing well is not that difficult. So lets do something about that.
“In its latest concession to the worst revenue slide since the Depression, The New York Times has begun selling display advertising on its front page, a step that has become increasingly common across the newspaper industry.”
– The New York Times, Jan. 5, 2009
It’s a sign of the times, pardon the pun.
There was a day, not so very long ago, when a virtual firewall separated the advertising and editorial functions of every self-respecting newspaper.
It was understood that editorial space (aka, “the news hole”) was not for sale, ever – that even if you were CBS, Ford, or the Coldwell Banker Broker of the Month, you could not insert yourself onto the front page. That space was reserved for what the editors judged to be the most urgent matters requiring the attention of the community on that particular day.
No part of that space was available to the highest bidder. Not even the bottom inch of the page.
Times change, of course (ha ha!)
Politics is a parade of lies and maybe it always has been. Yet this year the lies seem even more brazen than we’ve ever seen.
It’s almost as if one of the candidates doesn’t realize that there’s a record now of everything he says. It includes video and transcripts, and people getting online to talk to each other about what he’s said.
This didn’t happen in elections 20 years ago. Prospective voters are talking to their friends, whom they trust, and spending less time watching the ordained pundits who are supposed to be making sense of the parade of lies.
We want to believe.
Who doesn’t want to change his or her life in some way? And wouldn’t it be great if we could do it easily, without effort? For relatively small outlays of time, energy and money?
If only we could find exactly the right information to act upon. We hardly dare to think about how wonderful our lives could be!
Fortunately there are still extra super-long sales letters all over the Internet that remind us of how incredible every day could be, if only…
There are a lot of them to read. (And so much to be gained by doing so!)
But seriously. This has to be the most amazing long-copy sales letter ever!
Mission statements had value once — they served to get people focused on what the company’s purpose really was, so that everyone could aspire to fulfilling it really well.
Achieving that kind of clarity seemed like a good idea, so pretty soon we were all supposed to create our own individual mission statements, so we could march to our our own well-defined beat and lead more productive, purposeful lives.
Extreme clarity is not for everyone, however, and somewhere along the line, mission statements started getting mushy, full of weasel words that create wiggle room. Today they all seem like they were written by committee and carefully crafted to offend no one — in other words, engineered to be totally meaningless.
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will largely ignore you.
Tell a compelling story about why your mousetrap is the best in the world, and you’ve got the basis for a sustainable business.
Whatever product or service you provide, the success of your business depends on your ability to:
- Let people know about it.
- Compel them to buy.
Marketing really is everything. And it’s not just true in business, it’s a rule of nature. Flowers advertise themselves to bees with scents and vivid colors. Religions market themselves to the masses with promises of eternal redemption. Pitchers sell their curve balls as hittable, while trying their hardest to make them not so.