Feb 27 2010
The elevator pitch is dead! How’s your introduction?
Spend enough time around the marketing field and sooner or later — when seeking new business or a new job — someone will insist that you employ a technique called “the elevator pitch.”
The basic premise is that you’re in an elevator and you have only the time between floors to “sell” a product, a service or yourself. Perhaps I am a bit too literal (or too focused on what happens in the real world) but I have NEVER met anyone who’s “sold” anything in an elevator. (Although I freely admit that other good things can happen in elevators, especially stuck elevators, and especially during events such as the Great Northeast Blackout that supposedly led to the Blackout Baby Boom, though that apparently doesn’t exist either.) Most often, however, I am reminded of what a good friend and CEO once told me: “Every time somebody starts that elevator thingy on me, I keep thinking they are spinning me and I am getting the SHAFT.” What a great picture to leave in the mind of someone you hope to impress!
So let’s put the elevator pitch to rest. Allow me to share my own take on what is REALLY supposed to happen when you meet someone for the first time and are looking to continue the conversation, whether it’s for new business, a new job, or hey, even a date. It’s something I call your introduction. OK, that’s not a very sexy name. I am open to suggestions.
Whatever you call it, the introduction should advance the conversation. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of practicing this process thousands of times, not only with my firm, WordWrite Communications, but also in coaching hundreds of senior managers through job transition when I was a volunteer instructor at Priority Two, a non-profit in the North Hills that’s been helping people with career transition since 1982.
During those years, I and my good friend Dick Singer, a coach to CEOs and a Vistage chair here in Pittsburgh, taught a four-week program called “Branding Boot Camp.” One week was devoted to developing your introduction.
As we taught it, a good introduction has three stellar components that make you unique, memorable and compelling. And if you think of the average environment in which you are delivering your introduction, say, a networking event or cocktail reception, that’s what you want. If you are at such an event, and there are 10 people in your field there, how do stand out from the others?
I use a process that incorporates three steps: A metaphor, a “payoff” or transition statement, and a question. For example, here is my basic introduction:
The people who know me best say that after 20 years in journalism and 10 in PR, what I really am is a great storyteller. Just as a storyteller creates a compelling plot and shares the hero’s struggle to deliver a happy ending, I use every tool in the PR toolkit to help clients tell their great untold stories and make them heroes in their stories. I’d love to sit down with you and hear about any great untold stories you might know.
So in my case, the metaphor is storyteller, which isn’t all far from what a public relations practitioner does (and in fact, at our company, we’ve built our entire process around this concept). The payoff is aligning what a storyteller does with how I work. The question (which in my formulation is an implied question) invites further dialogue. Let’s be honest — that’s all you’re going to get from an initial meeting. You aren’t going to “sell” anything.
I’ve used this basic format in a variety of settings many times. Here’s a favorite from Priority Two. Some years ago, a “network administrator” named Brian came to us because he was in career transition. What the heck is a network administrator? It’s a perfect example of how not to describe yourself, by job title instead of by what value YOU bring. For example, a network administrator at IBM headquarters has a far different job than someone at a 25-person company.
Brian said what he really liked was solving IT problems for his users that no one else could. Then he shared that his hobby was magic. So Houdini the IT administrator was born. At first, Brian was pretty skeptical about this concept. Look for an IT job while comparing yourself to an escape artist? Really? But I’ll never forget when Brian came to class so excited he could barely speak. That day he’d gotten a call to meet with a CEO. The call, from the CEO’s assistant went like this: “The CEO couldn’t remember your name but kept telling me, ‘Get me a meeting with Houdini!’ ” Unique, memorable and compelling.
Can I really kill the elevator pitch all by myself? No. Can I help others make an initial impression that is unique, compel and compelling? Yes. Let me know what you think, and if you try it, how your own “introduction” progresses. I’ll consider it a small measure of my life’s work if my CEO friend can go to networking events around town without waiting for one of us to give him the shaft!
Paul Furiga is the president and founder of WordWrite Communications, a fast-growing Pittsburgh public relations agency employs the ageless power of storytelling to deliver results for its clients. You can contact Paul and learn more about WordWrite at: http://www.wordwritepr.com.
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