Quantum² Resources : Marketing & Management Tools : The Elevator Speech

The Elevator Speech

What is an elevator speech?

It is a marketing technique. The definition I use most often is that the elevator speech is a 30 second "second impression". An opportunity for both publicity and public relations, it is a brief sincere message to move people toward mutual goals. Anyone can use it and it can be delivered to anyone—a manager, a CEO, a customer, a potential client, a professor, an airplane seatmate, your mother-in-law—well, in other words, anyone you meet. 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:

1. Who is your target customer? Think in terms of your customers' difficulties and what motivates them.
2. 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?
3. What are the benefits of my service/product? Your thoughts should center around questions like: What problem is solved by my service? What solutions have worked? What has failed?
4. 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 in order to offer a suggestion for customer action.

Formulate the Speech

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 at the beginning and a call-to-action at the end and there you have your elevator speech.

Refine and Practice

Naturally, this will only be a rough draft. You need to refine it and practice it and refine it again...and then practice it some more. This 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.

An Example

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 website at http://quantum.dialog.com and, if you like the information there, join the Quantum² network? It's free to information professionals worldwide.