5 Reasons to Ditch Your Elevator Pitch

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For business owners, the dreaded elevator pitch incites great anxiety, and oftentimes, abject fear. Beyond pitch competitions, every day, countless individuals attempt to introduce themselves, share information and engage others for the purpose of building a relationship to sell products and services or themselves.

While it’s highly unlikely you can close a deal at hello with a killer elevator pitch—even a pitch that is flawlessly delivered—it is completely possible that a poorly constructed and delivered elevator pitch can unnecessarily lengthen the sales process, make an extremely poor impression or remove your company from consideration altogether.

Even more daunting are the numerous recommended elevator pitch rules. From those that proclaim an individual should introduce themselves in less than 10 seconds to no more than 60 seconds, making a positive and memorable first impression should be the ultimate goal.

The elevator pitch has an interesting and storied Hollywood history. In Hollywood’s heyday, writers, producers and directors would perfect a pitch for their projects and would share them with studio executives during an elevator ride. This practice graduated into the business world and has become a go-to communication staple at all types of business functions, particularly networking events.

Whether you’ve honed your pitching skills or are still mastering them, there are five important reasons to ditch your elevator pitch and to develop a more strategic approach to introduce yourself, your company and your products and services to prospects, industry peers or influencers.

• Avoid being transactional. Elevator pitches are a transactional activity that limit your ability to successfully connect with others. It is important that you present yourself, your business and your brand in a manner that communicates confidence, competence and interest. The ultimate goal of engaging others is to strategically build a mutually beneficial relationship with prospects, peers and influencers.
• Invite others into the conversation. Generally, when someone delivers an elevator pitch, they are 100 percent focused on the pitch and are oblivious to their audience. This approach serves to disengage people rather than stimulate their interest. It is better to develop a conversational manner that encourages two-way dialogue and engagement.
• Engage authentically. Oftentimes, delivering an elevator pitch can be awkward, painful and downright ugly, leaving a negative impression or, worse, a disastrous presentation of your personal and company brands. When engaging in face-to-face interactions, the majority of the communication occurs through your nonverbal behaviors and your tone of voice. Therefore, authenticity is critically important to making a unique, positive and memorable first impression that supports your brand.
• It’s not about you. Meeting prospective customers, new peers or influencers presents a great opportunity to gather the information necessary to develop a strategic and appropriate follow-up opportunity. Limit your information sharing and encourage others to share more.
• Play the long game. Networking has become passé and extremely ineffective. Savvy business owners and professionals recognize the value of building strategic and mutually beneficial relationships as a mission-critical skill for success. While you can’t win business with an elevator pitch, you can most certainly lengthen the sales process or lose a business opportunity.

A more effective method to introducing yourself, your company and your products or services involves three simple steps.

First, introduce yourself, your company and your products or services. Next, share how you, the company or its products or services adds great value to your customers. In other words, how do you help your customers succeed, and what are the typical results? Finally, engage in conversation by inviting others to introduce themselves or by asking how their organization handles the issues or opportunities that you help your customers excel.

With this approach, you can stand out by making a more positive, engaging and memorable impression. You also can gain invaluable information on prospective customers, shorten the sales process, and help to build a strategic and mutually beneficial relationship.

A version of this post originally appeared here.

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