{"id":5548,"date":"2013-10-14T13:31:34","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T17:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/?p=5548"},"modified":"2019-06-07T13:38:58","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T17:38:58","slug":"marketing-monday-do-you-have-an-elevator-pitch-or-are-you-more-conversational","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/marketing-monday-do-you-have-an-elevator-pitch-or-are-you-more-conversational\/","title":{"rendered":"Marketing Monday: Do you have an elevator pitch? Or are you more conversational?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Do<\/a>
Do you have an elevator pitch? A short marketing message you can spit out before the elevator doors open?
(Image used under Creative Commons terms, courtesy of Ryan Syms)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nWhat do you do?
\nIt’s a question that comes up a lot in American small talk.
\nMaybe you’re meeting friends of friends and you’ve already been through “How do you know each other?” so work is the next logical topic.
\nOr you’re at a holiday party and you find yourself chitchatting with someone who could be an ideal customer.
\nOr you’re at a networking mixer and everyone gets an opportunity for a two-minute intro.
\nAt varying degrees of casual to formal, we talk about our work a lot.
\nTo be ready to make the most of these opportunities, in business school we talked a lot about preparing an elevator pitch<\/a> — the name coming from the idea that you’re in an elevator with someone who could help advance your business and you want to get across your most essential, compelling points before one of you gets off that elevator.
\nAs MBA students, we’d work on these, refine them, practice them together.
\nWhen I heard author Michael Port speak recently<\/a>, he urged audience members to dump their elevator pitches and just talk to people.
\nI totally get where he’s coming from.\u00a0Don’t sound like a radio commercial — some restrictions may apply, not valid in Alaska and Hawaii <\/a>— but instead engage with the other person about what matters to him or her, see if there’s something you do that might be interesting.
\nBut I still think there’s value in preparing your pitch, then tailoring it as needed. Maybe that means it’s more like three or four talking points you get comfortable saying clearly and succinctly, and you adapt as needed.
\nFor example, when I tell people I’m a marketing consultant, I’m generally met with stony silence. It’s a bland phrase that doesn’t mean much to most people, and perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t present an opportunity to keep the conversation moving — if we’re making small talk about the weather, where we grew up and what we do, part of my job is to return volley in a way that keeps the conversation moving.
\nSo I have a few different phrases that I use, depending on the environment, including:<\/p>\n