Nine Steps to Help You Create the Perfect Elevator Pitch

Summary: Elevator pitches can open up doors for future employment and advancement opportunities and can help you meet your career goals.

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An elevator pitch is a crucial introduction with potential employers. Being able to provide an effective pitch in just a couple minutes (or the amount of time one rides an elevator) is difficult when trying to keep it true to your character as well as your career goals. You may already have an elevator pitch prepared, but are you so proud of it that you are willing to give it to anyone at any time? Probably not. Elevator pitches can help you land a job, promotion, or greater opportunities to grow your business, so get working on one that you know is powerful enough to get the job done.




“What do you do?”

• See How to Tell Your Story during an Interview for more information.

This question can be asked by just about anyone, and your response will decide whether any future discussions take place. Make sure you don’t do any of these things when coming up with your elevator pitch:

• Sound like a robot
• Bore or confuse them
• Be so vague that they still don’t know what exactly you do
• Sound like a salesman
• Undersell or oversell your skills and experience

Follow these nine steps that will help you create the perfect elevator pitch:

1. Say as little as possible so that the pitch is no more than a couple minutes long. Keep the pitch catered to the audience you are talking to in order to help keep it concise.
2. Know what kind of work you want before creating the pitch. Knowing what you want beforehand makes it easier to know how to address it in your pitch so that it makes sense.
3. Know your audience so that your pitch will make sense to them and will let them know how they can help. Keep the lingo and explanations appropriate to the person you are talking to.
4. Market the problem you solve instead of what you do so that your audience will see your value immediately.
5. Explain your daily duties if you are thrown into a situation where you don’t have an elevator pitch planned.
6. Have data and concrete details to go along with your pitch so that it is more memorable.
7. Keep your pitch unexpected and unique. If you feel that it is dry then find some detail about yourself to give it some flair.
8. Cut something out so that you are only sharing a few interesting details about you. If they are interested, they will ask for more about what interested them so that you know what direction to continue in.
9. Your elevator pitch should lead to a conversation instead of being a one-sided lecture.

Photo: youinc.com



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