If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say they need to improve their ‘elevator pitch’ or their ‘30 second commercial…’
Most of the time, they are talking about practicing their talking, and talking, and talking…and the reality is, most people are horrendous at their ‘pitch.’ Why is it a ‘pitch,’ anyway?
Recently, we had the good fortune of having an eQ friend, Ian Altman, join our team for some time to talk about this topic. Ian is great at many things, one of which is helping people and businesses think about how they convey the value of what they do—a great complement to what we do at eQ. As part of the discussion, we talked about this ‘pitch’ thing, and how people can make this more effective. In this post, I’ll share with you the biggest areas of focus from that discussion that I believe you’ll find valuable.
Think about the problems you help your clients solve, not what you DO. For example, there are many service offerings we have at eQ, but if we spent time trying to explain all of those to someone we just met, half of it may not be relevant, and the other parts probably wouldn’t make sense, as they’d be out of context. What WOULD be relevant, however, is relating why prospects call you. For example, one situation why prospective clients call us is when there is a lack of trust between the business and their clients. This manifests itself in many ways, including:
• Lack of incremental revenue gained from clients
• Regrettable attrition of key clients
• Low levels of referrals from clients
When businesses see these symptoms, they should call us—we can help.
The takeaway for you, as you read this blog, is to think about the symptoms and problems your target prospects/clients have, so you can express these as reasons why prospects should call you (or, what would be a good referral situation). From here, you can better equip your team members to speak more effectively to these situations (and, you can also modify your web content, blogs, and other marketing/communication materials).
After all, it isn’t about PITCHING, as much as it is CATCHING the interest of your target prospects.
