Business Lingo Explained – The Elevator Pitch
by Yolandi on 08/12/09 at 7:30 am
1 comment
An elevator pitch is a crucial step when presenting your product, service, project or yourself to an audience for the first time. It’s an entrepreneur’s one minute explanation of his/her business model. It can take place over email, in a one-to-one conversation in a corridor or in a scheduled meeting. The term actually comes from pitching your idea to someone in the course of an elevator ride.
It can be defined as an overview of your service, product, project or yourself and is designed to get a conversation started. An elevator pitch is a basic introduction and should answer some fundamental questions:
- What is it?
- Who needs it?
- Why should I believe what you say?
You’re not aiming at closing a deal with your elevator pitch but rather to get people interested and wanting to know more. With an elevator pitch you’re telling your own story, so make it worth listening to. The most crucial part of an elevator pitch is getting you message across. Only by doing that will you get the attention of your audience and even have a chance to get into the details of what it is you’re selling.
Here you can find an example of a crafted elevator pitch to see how it’s done
Yolandi Janse van Rensburg writes about social media, marketing, life and, of course, cars. We say “of course” because Yolandi is nuts about anything on 4 wheels. Besides moonlighting as the Heavy Chef girl at World Wide Creative, Yolandi runs Autofemme, a blog about cars, as a business on the side. View more articles by Yolandi.
Tags: Business Lingo
Lsmith
Dec 22nd, 2009
Great post and very detailed explanation of an elevator pitch. Most people think they are necessary to just plainly write out but they should be memorized and rehearsed – if you can easily explain your business and ideas in a few quick minutes, then you most likely have a business plan worth pursuing! An elevator pitch is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle!