How to Create an Exceptional Elevator Pitch in 5 Minutes

Before crafting your pitch, make sure you have a very strong understanding of what your business can offer a potential client.

For example, if you manufacture a range of products, you need to know the key selling points of each of those items so you can describe them to a potential customer. And if you offer a particular service, you need to be able to explain why that service is helpful when you are attempting to persuade someone to invest in it.

When you know your business intimately, talking about it becomes second nature. As Albert Einstein once said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” So if you are a little shaky on a few details, brush up on your knowledge until you have got everything clear in your head.

It does not matter how good your business is or how well you know it if you cannot describe it to a stranger in an engaging manner. This is an area where top public speaking coach Jose Ucar excels:

“When you know your stuff and believe you are an authority in your subject, your audience will unconsciously associate you with a figure of authority during the first few seconds of your speech. If you sound confident and powerful, that’s who you become in the mind of a listener. Then you need to keep it up. Otherwise, it will turn into an illusion that quickly disappears.”

Sounding authoritative is important, but being passionate about your business is arguably the most crucial thing of all, as Jose explains:

“Picture, for a moment, a passionate business person and another one who is the complete opposite. Who would prefer to work with/for? I know; the answer is quite obvious.”

“This is the reason why ‘passion’ is my number one because it will be crucial in the process of building a strong emotional bond with the audience, and this feeling will radiate through your words and body language, trust me.”

There is no such thing as a perfect formula for an elevator pitch that works for everyone. Some people can sell their business to someone simply by clearly describing what it does in an enthusiastic manner. But many others find it more effective to tell their listener a story.

“I didn’t understand what my client’s financial planning business did until he shared the story of one of his customers,” Jose recalls. “Why didn’t you start with the story, I asked? Because a good story highlights what your product/service does for the customer. People are not interested in features but benefits and, by applying the power of stories, metaphors, analogies, and anecdotes, you can create a powerful elevator pitch.”

“Another of my clients was an SEO consultant who attended one of my workshops. When I met her at a networking event a few days later, I was surprised by her amazing elevator pitch. She had cleverly combined her blogging passion with what her business did in a very flowy narrative that finished by showing how successfully her blog was ranking thanks to her SEO skills.”

When you have mastered your elevator pitch and rehearsed it exhaustively until you can recite it from memory whenever you need to, consider crafting a second pitch that you can use for a different audience.

After all, everyone is different, so it stands to reason that some listeners will respond better to an alternative approach. For example, if you are standing in an elevator with a statistician, you should probably give him a pitch that includes key numbers about how your business performs. And if you are speaking to a very busy, high-powered executive, you will almost certainly need to grab their attention by highlighting at least one unique selling point of your products or services.

If your storytelling is your strength, then perhaps you should have two different stories ready to tell someone at a moment’s notice if the opportunity arises. When you have written and rehearsed your stories, all you have to do then is figure out, on the spot, which one to tell a particular individual. And whichever one you choose, speak with conviction.