Some of my business friends hate the Elevator Pitch concept and refuse to do them. While I do like the concept, I don’t get the name.
I prefer ‘Elevator Speech’ to ‘Elevator Pitch’. ‘Pitch’ sounds like you’re trying to sell something. No one likes to be sold to. ‘Speech’ sounds like you want to share some information. Even though the difference in connotation is subtle, it can impact the mindset of the person saying it … and hearing it as well. And the potential cleverness of ‘elevator’ has long since worn off and morphed into lame cliche.
Even better is ‘Defining Statement’ – a concept I learned from Small Business expert, author and speaker Marc LeBlanc over 25 years ago. It goes beyond stating what you do and ‘defines’ your business value proposition in the context of who benefits from what you do.
So, instead of me just saying that I’m an ‘Executive Presentation Coach and work with business leaders’, Marc helped me evolve into a ‘Resource for business leaders who want to take away the pain from workplace presentations’. Wow … what a difference that’s been for me.
So, while I Still Don’t Get Elevator Pitches, I really do Get Defining Statements … hope you do to.