What to cover

Both what you say and how you say it — in other words, the content and structure of your pitch — are very important. In planning your 60-second pitch, you need to focus on a number of key areas:

• Introduction: The introduction is where it all starts. You can’t just launch into a spiel without letting your audience know who you are and why you’re qualified to address them on your subject. You need to introduce yourself by name because this is one of the key things that you want them to remember.

  Make sure that you include your name at both the beginning and the end of your 60-second pitch. You need to do it twice both to reinforce it and to give your audience a second chance to remember it. Remembering who you are is vital for others to be able to engage with you in a follow-up, and to assist in this, make sure you provide a business card as you part.

• Language: Using plain language is important because you need to be able to communicate in a clear and concise manner. Avoid MBA-speak, corporate-speak, and acronyms at all cost. Your native language contains more than enough vocabulary to enable you to craft clear, unambiguous sentences and articulate a message without having to rely on made-up words. Your audience won’t have the time or, likely, inclination to try to decode anything else.

  Don’t hide your message behind a cloak of Ivy League hyperbole. If you mean something like “we use it successfully,” don’t say “we eat our own dog food” as an example. This is especially true when working in multinational or multicultural environments. Imagine what something like “eat our own dog food” sounds like to non-native English speakers and what they’re likely to think of some stranger accosting them with such rubbish. Moving your sale forward is the most unlikely outcome of such an encounter.

  Practice your 60-second pitch in front of your significant other and get some honest feedback on your language. If your significant other understands you, try the same with your parents or neighbors. Keep refining your language until you’re able to convey your message in a form that’s immediately understood by all.

• Making each word count: Put 60 seconds on a timer (do it now), and see just how long a time it is to fill. Don’t feel the need to fill exactly 60 seconds, either. If you can get your clear message into 50 seconds, then stop there and don’t fill the remaining time with waffle. The only really acceptable repetition is your name and maybe the name of your company. You should aim to develop your 60-second pitch in as few meaningful words as possible.
• Being relevant, specific, and tangible: Your message needs to be relevant, specific, and tangible, and you need to continually refine it until you achieve these goals because anything less won’t get you the result you want. Give your audience just enough information to stimulate a desire to know more. You’re not going to move your sale forward if you don’t communicate what you’re talking about and why they should be interested in listening to you. Get to the point, make the point, and finish with a call to action, which can be a request to speak again, for example, depending on your objectives (which I cover later in this chapter).
• Conversational delivery: Your 60-second elevator pitch isn’t a sales pitch and you’re not trying to close a deal. Your aim is to start a dialogue and sow a seed for future follow up, so keep the tone conversational in nature as if you’re talking very briefly, one on one, to someone who could assist your sales cycle.

• High level rather than detail: You won’t have time to go into any detail, nor should you in this situation. Keep your 60-second pitch aimed at a high level and focus on a key benefit as part of your unique selling proposition (USP; see Chapter 7). Detail is for another time and, more than likely, with a different audience. Your role here is to get to that other time and place, and your 60-second pitch audience could be the key that you need to unlock the path. Give them a reason to do this.

  Express your USP in an end user’s terms rather that some internal or marketing-driven soundbite. Leaving out your USP is like forgetting to go to work — it’s that important.

• Relevance to your audience: To keep your pitch relevant, prepare a few different versions, in varying lengths of perhaps 30, 40, and 60 seconds, to cater for slightly different audiences, circumstances, and time opportunities. You won’t know in advance who you’ll have a short opportunity to speak to, so have versions that are relevant to a CEO, a finance director, and a marketing director, for example, who each have a slightly different view on and interest in your subject area. Each variant of your elevator pitch must, however, be consistent and convey the same message but be expressed in slightly different terms.

  By definition, you’re going to use your elevator pitch to introduce yourself to someone who doesn’t know you, isn’t expecting to meet you, and is therefore extremely unlikely to hang around when the elevator has parked to wait for you to finish. My rule is to ensure that I deliver just enough of the right type of information in the right way to catch the attention of my target audience and make them receptive to a follow-up.

Here’s an example of an elevator pitch that takes all the preceding guidelines into consideration:

My name is Stewart Stuchbury, and I’m the CEO of N58 Consulting Group. We help clients win more new business than they can achieve on their own. Let me briefly share a recent success: A graphic design company approached us from a referral and asked if we could help them. They were excellent at what they did but poor at winning new business. We developed a replicable plan for them so that they understood their ideal prospects, how to contact them, and how to win real business. Their sales were up by 60 percent after the first quarter. It would be good to have an opportunity to discuss how we might be able to help you. Here’s my card with my direct contact details. Do you have a personal assistant I could talk to about scheduling an appointment, please?

When to use it

A key to successful elevator pitching is knowing when to use it. Generally, any chance encounter with a key stakeholder is an open invitation to engage with him and not one that you should pass up lightly.

However, as you know, people are busy and have their own agendas to deal with. If you approach your audience at an inopportune time, then you’re likely to have the opposite effect than the one you hoped for. Use your eyes to observe the environment and determine whether now is the right moment. Hold fire if you can see that now is obviously not a good one; otherwise, go ahead and engage. (See the next section for more information on when not to use your elevator pitch.)

Engage your audience first, and give them a moment to react before you launch headlong into your pitch. If they have a level of interest high enough to want to turn it into a conversation or to ask questions, then allow that to happen without trying to force-feed them your rehearsed ending. An impromptu pitch that leads to a compelling conversation is about as high as you could hope for, so if it moves in that direction, then go with the flow.

You need to have a good, solid opening to get you started, which is why I suggest you begin by simply introducing yourself (as I note in the preceding section). Nothing like the sound of your own name and position gets the sales juices flowing. Avoid being tongue-tied or star-struck by solid preparation, and remember the way you deliver your pitch is as important as what you actually say.

A 60-second pitch can also be a useful social tool, and you can use a version of it to introduce yourself at a networking event or party, quickly getting beyond who you are and allowing more time for interaction and conversation. Just remember that your audience has changed and that you’re not seeking an ultimate close to a deal.

Another key use for a 60-second pitch, and one that I use a lot in my business, is for a phone conversation introduction. Especially in a first call with a potential prospect, having a succinct introduction helps you avoid the cringeworthy opening of “How are you today?” as if you really care what the answer is. This is such a powerful tool that forces you to really think about your opening impression that I make all the new clients I work with develop a 60-second pitch for use in exactly this situation. (I discuss first impressions in detail in Chapter 3.)

When not to dive straight in

In the preceding section, I mention being aware of the environment and considering whether it’s appropriate to launch into your pitch. This consideration sets you apart from snake-oil salespeople who’ll launch into a pitch at their granny’s funeral if they thought it’d give them an advantage. Throughout this book, one of my recurring themes is the need to be professional, and that comes above everything else in my mind. Don’t try to score cheap points.

Read the body language of your audience before and during engagement, and you’ll see whether they’re receptive to you. Don’t waste your time and reputation if they’re not because it really won’t get you anywhere. For me, knowing when not to pitch is as important as the way you deliver your pitch. You can acknowledge someone without pitching to him if the circumstances are right, and you can even use that in a follow-up, saying that you saw him and realized that he was busy but you wanted to bring something to his attention, and then you can give the gist of the pitch, asking for an opportunity to discuss with him in person.

I’m sure that many people (myself included) have encountered a situation where on their way out of a prospect’s building, they happen to notice the managing director arrive with an entourage who he’s in deep conversation with. Unless the world is about to end, this isn’t a good time to dive into a pitch. Again, it comes back to being aware of and sensitive to your environment.

Do not, under any circumstances, use a chance encounter to deliver bad news or a complaint of any kind. It’s not the time or place to leave negative feedback about a member of the decision-making unit, for example. (See Chapter 19 for more about decision-making units.)

You need to leave room for your audience to respond to you, so don’t deliver your 60-second pitch and then just wander off. Allow your audience a moment to consider what you’ve said and let them offer to engage further if they want to. This is the Holy Grail of the 60-second pitch, so make sure that you do have more substance behind it.

Of equal importance is knowing when to shut up. After delivering your pitch, leave your audience to do the talking until you’re fully engaged with them. Consider what your objectives for this encounter are and secure them first. (I discuss objectives later in this chapter.)

You’re seeking to use your elevator pitch as a springboard to enable you to move forward in your sales cycle, so don’t create a poor impression or make a nuisance of yourself. I cover the importance of making a good first impression in Chapter 3.

Securing another opportunity

An unexpected 60-second pitch is, by its very nature, limited in what it’s able to achieve at the time, although the long-term implications of this event can be much more compelling. Recognize, for example, that you’re not going to finalize a deal in 60 seconds, so don’t expect to. Your mindset shouldn’t be on closing a sale or really even on selling at all. One of your primary objectives needs to be to secure a follow-up, where you can fully state your case and progress your sales cycle. Your 60-second pitch is a primer toward reaching this objective.

Go in to your 60-second pitch knowing the ideal outcome you want to achieve and ask for it. Engage with an open question, perhaps along the lines of “How would an additional 3 percent on your top line change the approach to your investment in automation? I have the figures on my desk and would be happy to go through them with you.” Then arrange to set up the follow-up meeting. A word of caution here: Don’t oversell and underdeliver. If you’re promising something of substance to secure a meeting, make sure you deliver it.

Always have a business card with you, and offer it as part of establishing the next step or contact. Attempt to maintain control by asking for contact details to confirm an appointment, but accept gracefully if the person declines and says he’ll contact you. This is one of the very few times I suggest that you readily accept not being in control of a follow-up because you’ve just dropped in, out of the blue, and he needs to have an opportunity to show that he has an element of control and hasn’t been hijacked by a stranger who’s now trying to dictate terms.

Where you’ve given up control of the follow-up, always write or email preferably to confirm your discussion point and state that you look forward to hearing from him as agreed. Writing may be necessary if you can’t secure an email address. Or you can try phoning his assistant to either secure his email address or ask her to prompt him to arrange the follow-up meeting. But don’t be pushy here.

As in all things, ensure that you update the CRM with the full details and a contact report. Send your new acquaintance or his assistant a copy of your contact report, and also send a copy to your key prospect so that he doesn’t find out later that you’ve gone over his head. (Flip to Chapter 9 for more about CRM systems.)

Making yourself memorable

The person you get an opportunity to deliver a 60-second pitch to, who could potentially open up doors for you or get you past an obstacle that you’ve been struggling with, is going to be busy and in demand, with his own set of issues to resolve. It almost goes without saying that the more potentially useful a contact is, the busier and more preoccupied he seems to be. You therefore have to grab his attention with a memorable, well-prepared pitch.

In Chapter 3, I cover the importance of making a positive first impression. An elevator pitch is your first impression, so you need to be memorable and for the right reasons. It’s easy to be memorable for the wrong reason, and at a stroke this can finish off any credibility that you had with that company as well as finish off any opportunity of winning new business with it.

Here are a few pointers for making yourself memorable in the right way:

• As in most new business sales activities, be prepared for a variety of scenarios. I’d even suggest that you limit an elevator encounter with a senior member of a prospect company to something simple, such as “Hello, Mr. Jones, I’m John Smith from ZYX Corp. Pleased to meet you,” unless you have planned your approach in detail and have a well-rehearsed elevator pitch ready.
• In delivering your 60-second pitch, remember to keep it human and let your passion shine through. Even if your target audience hasn’t fully grasped the significance of your message, let them see the passion in your delivery, and all isn’t necessarily lost should the message not hit home.
• Don’t spout information, and avoid jargon. Speak clearly and concisely, using native natural language, as I discuss in the earlier section “What to cover.” The style and tone of your delivery should have a smooth conversational flow and most certainly not feel like an aggressive sales pitch.

• Stick to the big picture, and don’t attempt to get involved in detail because this is simply not relevant at this stage. Use the time wisely. Rehearse again and again until your timing, tone, delivery, and body language are as you want then to be. And then rehearse some more. In fact, always be rehearsing as you never know when an opportunity will present itself.

• Don’t stumble around looking for something to say, but do be prepared to respond warmly to any attempt to engage that the prospect makes. You may even find yourself on the end of his elevator pitch and learn a thing or two from it.

Getting gatekeeper information

At the very least, one of your objectives should be to secure access to a gatekeeper and clues as to how to work through one. By gatekeeper, I mean a secretary, an assistant, or someone in a similar role who guards access to the decision maker by fielding email, calls, and letters. A gatekeeper will also often be the custodian of the decision maker’s diary and, in controlling all external access, is a very important target of a new business salesperson.

Don’t think of gatekeepers as the enemy or as obstacles to be overcome, however much they may give that impression. You should always seek to make them a valuable resource. Gatekeepers can be a fount of knowledge and generally love being asked to help.

Try asking for help and see the response it brings you. I do this a lot, often whether I need help or not, because it makes gatekeepers immediately feel important and engaged in whatever you’re discussing. Never, ever patronize a gatekeeper, or you risk never getting in contact with the decision maker again. Asking for help brings the gatekeeper into your camp and can be illuminating. If, for example, you’re finding it difficult to speak to the decision maker, then ask the gatekeeper how you should go about getting an opportunity.

If you ever make a commitment to a gatekeeper, then make sure you keep to it, to the letter, because it will be remembered. You need to show that you’re reliable, and when he enables you to speak to the decision maker, it is safe in the knowledge that you do as you commit to do. He will have done his job in vetting you and letting you pass as someone that can be trusted.

As an objective of your 60-second pitch, therefore, access to or information about a gatekeeper is important. You can then use this direct referral from the decision maker to the gatekeeper to your advantage as he will be much more inclined to help you if the decision maker has told him to, which is essentially what a referral is.

When you get a referral from a 60-second pitch to a gatekeeper or elsewhere, you need to act on it quickly before it gets forgotten. It’s no good going back to a referral after six weeks — even six days is far too long. It needs to be within one working day while the lead is warm.