Chad’s Blog
Pragmatic Technologies for Life and Business Success®
This week’s reflection point: Not long ago I attended a workshop on how to communicate your message most effectively. The presenter made a point as to why it is rather important to develop your 30-second elevator pitch. Although I was not a fan of this technique, I continued to listen to her reasoning. To my surprise, she began desperately rummaging through her purse looking for her elevator pitch notes and then struggled to deliver it. I searched for the nearest exit.
I don’t think there could have been a better demonstration of the absurdness of an elevator pitch and its lack of effectiveness. Besides, the last thing I want to hear during my elevator ride is someone pitching his or her elevator pitch.
So what’s the alternative? The key is to craft a powerful and succinct sentence that describes your value and its significant impact on your clients’ life and business. Some refer to it as your value or positioning statement, others call it your unique selling proposition. I call it your impact statement. Here are a couple of examples of such statements:
- We help create tomorrow’s thought leaders.
- We help our clients leverage the web to transform their success.
Unfortunately and too often I meet entrepreneurs that are unable to articulate their impact statement or describe what it is that they do. If your impact statement is vague or unclear in your mind, how then would your potential clients comprehend what it is that you do and how you could help them?
This week’s tip: Develop and articulate your value in such a way that it clearly states the substantial impact and value for your clients.
This week’s bonus: Are you self-sabotaging your web site? Find out if you are and what to do about it.
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© Chad Barr 2013. All Rights Reserved.
Chad, your post is just about semantics. The issue is, as you identify, that the entrepreneur must know what to say at the appropriate moment, not whether you call it an elevator pitch or an impact statement. What you describe as an impact statement is a weak elevator pitch. I say weak because the two examples you cite would tell me nothing more than what many others could and would say and certainly would not pique my interest in your service.
An elevator pitch is not something you present to an unwilling listener – it’s meant to answer a question, typically, what do you do, with a succinct sentence or two, with the purpose of piquing sufficient interest in the questioner to want to know more.
I had a quick look at your cbsoftware site and this pops into my mind as a much better one for you – probably far from ideal, but this would get me much more interested than your bland statement above, whatever you call it 🙂
“We meld software and the web to create digital empires and have helped customers grow their business, by as much as 27%, by leveraging that integrated resource.”
Jack,
This is not about semantics BUT a complete different in mindsets. Yours is about pitching and mine is about the remarkable value the client receives.
We work with thought leaders and aspiring thought leaders. To them, strengthening that status is critical. It may not apply to you, but it does to most of my clients. So, my impact statement stands and is extremely effective.
I could care less about what you do. All I care about is the value I would achieve by virtue of working with you. Hence, the difference between the two.
Your proposed “improved” statement is all about methodology. The ONLY value is “grow their business.” I personally find “transform their business success” to be much stronger.
Thank you for your comments. I do appreciate it.
Chad