“The Elevator Pitch”
I can’t begin to count the number of nervous eyes I have seen in entrepreneurs whenever you ask them what they do. You might as well have just asked them where their birthmark was, or what they hate most about their own body. It’s this incredibly big question. It’s a mountain. Even if it’s something as simple as, “I own a construction company” there is still a desire to answer in a way that makes you feel unique from all the images of construction companies that you can see flashing behind your listener’s eyes.
The Elevator Pitch:
A 2-4 sentence description of your business that you could give in the time it takes to ride an elevator with an executive. It should inform the listener clearly about what service or product you offer and differentiate you from all the others.
Ugh.
You can always tell those people who have been through a business program, or are doing some executive course. They always have these nifty little speeches they give about themselves. So slick, so sales-centric. I am always completely impressed by it, and in turn feel totally dejected. Why is my own idea not that simple? What am I missing? I’m in marketing! I do this all day for other people!
But to be honest, it's pretty funny how unhelpful an elevator pitch can be. Often, after feeling so impressed by those people, I completely forgot what they said. Not one single notion of what they do or who they are. The whole purpose of their pithy pitch was to give me a memorable nugget to recall later. Mission failed. It was so short, so well-crafted, but completely forgettable.
Two questions:
The first: why is this so hard to do well? The second and perhaps more dangerous: must we do it like this?
There are probably dozens of ways to tackle the issues but here's a stab from what we've experienced at Pivotol. Really, the answers to these questions are intertwined. Part of what makes the elevator pitch so hard is because it's a bad idea in the first place, part of it is because even a better idea is just plain hard. Clear as mud? Let me explain.
There is something at the root of the elevator pitch that just plain tastes bad. You're selling yourself! Nobody likes to be sold, treated as a product, a commodity, an item on a shelf among other items on sale, let alone do it to themselves. It feels like an offense to our dignity and the endeavors we pour our lives into. To pitch yourself is to kowtow to the depersonalizing god of the marketplace, to shine your face, dress up your life in attractive colors, and offer a complete and easy solution to all the client's problems. Nobody can live up to that.
Those of us who have a bit of self-knowledge and are honest, know deep down that we can't fit our life and work into a perfect elevator pitch that will knock 'em down every time. But what can we do? People are going to ask, "what do you do?" We absolutely do need to share ourselves with others, especially potential clients. That's where the story comes in.
Tell your story.
Your story is the deeper meaning and sense of purpose that drives your business. It flows from your life, your values, your aspirations, and your experiences. All of these have woven together into an utterly unique and compelling tapestry of who you are and what your business is about. Of course it informs the kind of service or product you provide but more importantly, it informs how you go about your work, the integrity of your process, the quality of your relationships, the kind of people you desire to work with. Ultimately this is the path of your life that you are inviting people to join you on, whether clients or employees.
Telling your authentic story, honestly and clearly, is not a manipulative sales move that forces people to choose you. It is the beginning of a conversation, without trying to say everything at once or push a sale. It invites questions, curiosity, and room for something to grow. It is an invitation to explore a working relationship. So, rather than viewing the elevator as a place to spew something cool, it becomes a brief space to become memorably thoughtful.
Telling your own story is hard.
It's yours, you've lived every day of it, you should be the expert! But it's so hard to tell your own story. The problem is exactly that you've been the main character, you've only seen it through your own eyes. But you need to be able to tell it to someone else! You need to see it through their eyes. There is a discomfort there that is not unlike the feeling of hearing your own voice on a recording. My voice can't possibly be that high and nasal sounding. How do people stand to listen to me?
There is a sense to your story and it can make sense to other people, but sitting in the driver's seat somehow makes it hard to see the coherent whole, the clear line that your life and business are on. You need to zoom out.
The Pivot
Arriving at that clear telling of your story, one so easy that you could do it on an elevator ride, but so natural that the hearer comes away feeling like they know you and that they might like to pick up the conversation again, this is the fruit of our work at Pivotol. Our ethos was born from this problem. We zoom out with you and see the bigger picture through hours of listening to you, your best clients, and your employees, curiously exploring the currents of your life and business, both deep and subtle, pressing in on points of joy, tension, hope, failure, and success.
Walking this path with people, we tease out the common threads, the ties that bind your story together, and give it the coherence you've always felt was there but couldn't put words to. We craft those words and hand back to you, in our Story Document. It is a gift that we get so much pleasure in giving, the gift of yourself and your business, distilled and articulated in concise and clear language, ready for you to learn to tell it yourself. Don't worry, you won't be on your own there either, we'll help you tell it. That's brand shepherding, and we’ll dive into that another day.
Your story, told by you.
But how, in the end, is this different from an elevator pitch? And hey, it still seems hard!?! Yes, it does take work, anything worth doing does! But in the end, what you are not doing is trying to find some way to cram your life and your business into some attractive package that will manipulate people into working with you. What you have is an authentic but concise and real way of sharing yourself with the world. Having done this work, you have a new clarity of mission and direction. You have language to describe it both in that elevator moment but also in greater depth when the follow-up conversation happens. If what you're doing has quality and integrity, those conversations will happen naturally.
You are not for sale, but you know who you are. You have the language to share yourself with others and can invite them to join that story and even make it a part of their own.
