Pitching Your Business: 4 Ways To Elevate Your Elevator Pitch
If you’re a part of the Thriving Africa mailing list, you’ve probably already seen the recommended content sent out in the mail. If you’d like to join the mailing list, click here.
For every founder, there comes that time when you have to tell someone what you do. Sometimes, you are caught off-guard, stumbling through an incoherent answer with “um’s” and “ah’s”. To put your best foot forward with your audience, be it a potential customer or a potential investor, it helps to have a well-researched pitch planned out ahead of time.
When it comes to pitching your venture, you might need to pitch something short and impromptu. That’s where the elevator pitch comes in. The elevator pitch gets its name from the following scenario: you stumble into an elevator and push the button for the floor you wish to go to, but before the door closes, one of the most successful businesspeople on the continent walks in and pushes a button. How do you successfully convince them to give you an audience at a later date before they get off and you part ways? In this article, we discuss 4 simple things you must include in your elevator pitch, along with a simple format to follow.
- Introduce yourself
Tell them who you are, the name of your venture and the position you hold in that venture. This leads up to the next point as it clearly sets the stage for what’s to come. Use your full name, or at the very least, an acceptable short form of your name.
2. Explain what your venture is about.
After introducing your venture, explain what your venture does. What problem does your venture solve? Here, you can classify your venture under a larger group. You can also provide the location of your target audience (this could be a physical, offline location or a virtual, online location).
3. What separates you from your competitors?
Here’s where you steal their attention and grab the show. You mention your competitors, ventures already filling the void/solving the problem for your target customer. Hopefully, your competitors are popular enough for your elevator audience to easily recall. After mentioning your competitors, set yourself apart by explaining your unique selling point (USP). What do you do differently? What have your competitors missed? What have your competitors compromised on? Do your homework properly before filling this out.
4. Ask for the appointment.
You are almost done. All you have to do here is ask if your elevator audience is open to continuing the conversation at a later time. A useful way to get through to them is to ask to get some advice on that later date. As I once heard from a mentor, “if you need money, ask for advice. If you need advice, ask for money”. When you get to that meeting, they will decide whether or not they will be willing to invest in you after they converse with you.
If you have come this far, you will understand the elevator pitch script provided below:
My name is _______ and I am the ______(position/title) at _______ (name of your venture), a __________ (category your venture belongs) targeted at solving ________ (problem) for _______ (target audience). Unlike other ventures in this _____ (venture category) such as ______ (list one or two competitors), we provide _______ (your unique selling point). Would you be willing to continue this conversation at a later date?
Try this the next time you want to explain what you do to someone whether inside or outside an elevator. It shouldn’t take you more than 30 seconds to get you through your pitch, so you don’t go into so much detail and take up so much time from your elevator audience.
Let us know how this script works for you. Drop a comment, or send us a mail at thriving.afrika@gmail.com.
To receive more content like this and more, join the Thriving Africa Community on any of these platforms: mail, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
