Every trade show staffer should have a solid elevator pitch that succinctly answers the question “What does your company do?”
Recently, I read an article outlining three steps to the perfect elevator speech. I agreed with a couple of the author’s suggestions but took exception with one.
I bought the requirements that elevator pitches should be short and easy to understand. I’d have said two sentences, maximum, and conversational in delivery. Far too many elevator pitches sound like they were written for a brochure and then rewritten by the legal department.
I parted company with the author when he recommended that an elevator pitch should be “irrefutable” and that at the end the listener “should not have more questions.” For those of us operating in the face-to-face environment (and doesn’t that include everyone delivering an elevator pitch), we want our elevator pitch to elicit questions from the listener. The best possible outcome is that the listener is intrigued enough to want to know more.
I encourage staffers at trade shows to end their elevator pitches with a question to ensure that a conversation ensues. Face-to-face marketing, after all, is all about opening relationships – not closing them down.