Quantum² Highlights
A newsletter of the Dialog leadership development program for information professionals

Dear Quantum² Member...
We hope your holidays were wonderful and that you’re ready for a great new year. And while we’re on the subject of the new year, have you made your professional New Year’s resolutions? When you do, you might want to consider regularly scheduling professional development sessions, such as those offered by Quantum². Choose a session or two from the sessions listed below to support your resolutions, and then go ahead and sign up.

Spotlight On Quantum² InfoStar:
Marilyn Bromley

Marilyn Bromley is the Library Director at The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (BNA), an employee-owned legal publisher in Washington D.C. She is dedicated to ensuring that the Library is appreciated as a valuable part of BNA. According to Marilyn, the perception is often that everything on the Internet is free, and librarians aren't really necessary. To combat this perception, the Library staff identified key services and interviewed key users about the time and money that the Library helped them save and the money it helped them make. Marilyn then performed a Return on Investment (ROI) analysis of the Library that brought high praise to the to the group’s efforts.

To learn more about Marilyn, read her full InfoStar profile at http://quantum.dialog.com/infostars/marilyn_bromley/.

For Marilyn’s ROI analysis, go to http://quantum.dialog.com/media/pdfs/roi.pdf .

And watch for more upcoming InfoStar profiles at http://quantum.dialog.com/.

Quantum² Topic of the Month
Marketing: The Elevator Speech

Often, we’re asked to deliver a Quantum² session in 30 minutes. You may know that our sessions are usually 90 minutes long, and because it’s difficult to compress a topic that much, one of the sessions we developed is on how to create an elevator speech.

What is an elevator speech?
It is a marketing technique. Think of the elevator speech as a 30-second “second impression.” It is a publicity and public relations opportunity, and is a brief, sincere message to move people toward mutual goals. Anyone can use it and it can be delivered to anyone you meet — a manager, a CEO, a customer, a potential client, a professor, an airplane seatmate, even your mother-in-law. It’s effective because it’s a brief and positive way to lead to the “next step,” and it can be used whenever the opportunity arises.

How do you create an elevator speech?
Here are four quick questions that will get you started:

• Who is your target customer? Think in terms of your customers’ difficulties and what motivates them.
• What are your deliverables? Describe the features of your products. Help form this answer using questions such as: Who are we? What do we offer? (the services or features we provide) What are our key strengths? What are our limitations?
• What are your services/products? Consider questions like: What problem is solved by my service? What solutions have worked? What has failed?
• What is the desired outcome? Do you want the customer to call you? Stop by the information center? Recommend you to a colleague? You need to have an objective in mind and be able to offer a suggestion for customer action.

Once you’ve answered these questions, your elevator speech becomes fairly simple to formulate. You can find different ways of handling this by a cursory search of the Web, but my favorite is the formula that uses these key words to create a couple of sentences:

• FOR (target customer)
• WHO (needs or is an opportunity for)
• THE (product or service name)
• IS A (product category)
• UNLIKE (primary competition)
• OUR PRODUCT (primary difference)

Then add an introduction and a call-to-action at the end and there you have your elevator speech.

Naturally, the first speech you create will only be a rough draft. You need to refine it and practice it and refine it again…and then practice it some more. The elevator speech should not be delivered as a “memorized speech. Rather, you should practice until it becomes internalized, almost a part of who you are. And the next time you’re in an elevator with your CEO, you won’t have to think twice about promoting your information service. You’ll have the words and the confidence you need.

By the way, I used this technique to create my own elevator speech and offer it to you as an example.

Hello, I’m Betty Jo Hibberd and I’m the North American manager of the Quantum² program at Dialog. For Information Professionals who are interested in expanding their roles as leaders in their organizations, Quantum² is a leadership development program that offers workshops based on strategic and business competencies. Unlike similar programs, ours is not merely information posted on the internet. It also offers a combination of training, communications, white papers, case studies and other tools to help information professionals demonstrate their value within their organizations. Why don’t you explore our Web site at http://quantum.dialog.com/ and, if you like the information there, join the Quantum² network? It’s free to information professionals worldwide.