Ellie ThompsonLanding more leads for your brand or a new product or service can be intimidating. Full-blown sales pitches are often hard to convince others to listen to. So how can you present information about your brand to level up and land more leads? Elevator pitches are the perfect solution.
You may have heard of an elevator pitch in terms of job searching – and this is a bit similar. However, instead of pitching yourself and your experience, you’ll be pitching your brand, product, or service.
Below, we have some of the top tips given to us by industry leaders to help you level up your elevator pitch to land more leads!
Time Yourself
The reason this process is called an ‘elevator pitch’ and not just a sales pitch is because it’s meant to be very quick. Quick enough to give on an elevator ride or when you briefly bump into someone. You need to be able to grab their attention and give a brief pitch that still makes an impact.
“An elevator pitch doesn’t need to have every marketing detail or product development step included,” says Reece Kresser, Co-Founder of Zizi. “Simple is better – Let them know the essentials and try to stay at or under 30 seconds. Because the time frame is so short, you’ll want to make sure you plan out your elevator pitch strategically.”
Practice
Practice makes perfect – and this is true with elevator pitches too. Because they’re so specific and brief, it can actually be very difficult to figure out what you want to include in the pitch. Summarizing your entire brand or a product into a 30-second speech can be very difficult. You don’t want to leave out anything relevant but you also shouldn’t be talking a mile per minute.
“Writing out your pitch and practicing it over and over can help you learn to gauge your timing and give you confidence when you go to deliver the elevator pitch,” says Max Schwartzapfel, CMO of Fighting For You. “Make sure you’re thinking through how the delivery is going to sound to the other parties and practice until you can do it without checking notes or feeling like you’ve forgotten something. You can practice delivering the pitch to friends, family members, and coworkers as practice.”
Record Your Pitch
In addition to delivering the pitch to your closest confidants for a critique, you can also record yourself giving the elevator pitch. This doesn’t have to be done with elaborate camera skills or perfect lighting – just record with your phone so you can get a feel for what you look and sound like as you’re giving the pitch.
“We’re our own worst critic,” says Jason Reposa, Founder and CEO of Good Feels. “While you don’t want to get so worked up about the tiny details that you never feel confident in your pitch, recording yourself can let you see and hear what others will experience. It can be a confidence boost to be able to watch that recorded pitch and feel good about how it was delivered. It can also help you prepare before a pitch to listen to that example before you enter a situation where you’ll be giving a pitch.”
Do Your Research
Doing your research about what will be the most impactful about your brand, service, or product to the types of people you plan to give the pitch to can be eye-opening. With only 30 seconds to use, it’s important that what you decide to incorporate into your elevator pitch is relevant and interesting for the people you’re giving the pitch to.
“It’s likely that the people you’re giving the elevator pitch to are going to have a ‘type’,” says Dr. Michael Green, Chief Medical Officer of Winona. “Maybe you’re pitching to small businesses, large corporations or you know the leadership styles of the executives. Do your research to see what would resonate best with those people as you plan your elevator pitch.”
Make it Personal
It doesn’t matter how many important titles someone has or how devoted they are to their job, making an elevator pitch personal to them is going to make an impact. In your research, you should learn as much as you can about the people you’ll be giving the elevator pitch to.
“While some scenarios are spontaneous and you don’t have a ton of research time, you should generally do your best to make it personal,” says Rachel Roff, Founder and CEO of Urban Skin Rx. “Tie in something you’ve spoken about with the individual or make it a point to show them you remembered something about them. We all love to hear that we’re memorable, so creating a pitch built on that idea can be much more impactful.”
Give a Call to Action
A call to action is important in an elevator pitch because, without one, your pitch ends up seeming more like an informative speech than a pitch. Let them know what you want them to do next (in a polite and professional manner, of course).
“A call to action doesn’t necessarily have to demand they purchase or invest in your product,” says Karim Hachem, VP of eCommerce of La Blanca. “You could request a longer meeting to discuss further interest or give them another way to get in contact with you. This gives them a purpose and allows you a chance to follow up with them as well.”
Conclusion
Elevator pitches are essential for brands to utilize in forming business connections, making sales, and promoting their products and services. They’re quick but efficient speeches that promote whatever it is you’re looking for others to become more interested in and they aim to make an impact on the listener in a short period of time.
Practicing and recording yourself can help you nail your timing and delivery. Knowing how to customize your elevator pitch to specific people or organizations can help too if you’re able to plan in advance and do some research.
Finally, you’ll want to make sure you give them a call to action. Let them know what they should do next. This could be investing in your brand, contacting you for another conversation, or purchasing a product or service.
Hopefully, this breakdown has helped you identify some ways you could level up your elevator pitch to land more leads. Good luck in your future endeavors!
