Does your organisation promote itself consistently and effectively?
It surprises me how many organisations – looking to sell their many and varied wares to potential customers – fail to have a joined-up approach to their marketing.
It seems critical to me that all members of the team talk about the organisation and their products and services in a consistent way, emphasising what makes them different and worthy of doing business with. But, in my experience, very few spend much time on this.
The way to construct this consistent message is to create an elevator pitch, so-called because it’s based around the scenario that a potential customer gets in a lift with you and asks you words to the effect of ‘what to you do?’
The assumption is that you have until they get out of the elevator (or lift) to hook them in to wanting a further conversation with a brief but snappy overview of your organisation. I guess it could also be called a networking pitch because the more likely usage is at networking events or when cold calling.
Anyway, we recommend the following structure to creating an elevator pitch:
WHO – Describe who you are and who you work with (preferably in same business/sector as listener)
WHAT – State your value as key results or impact
WHY – Unique benefits that your organisation brings. Show what you do that is different or better than others
GOAL – Describe your immediate goal. Include a time frame. Make it clear what you are asking of them.
The structure that we endorse is, in turn, based on excellent free guidance from Harvard Business School at this website.
www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/pitch/
Take a look – it has much to offer.
Of course that pitch has to be both structured and flexible so that it always contains the key messages but can tailored to suit.
But however you create a consistent message there is great value in going through the process. It’s undoubtedly painful. Your brain will hurt. But it forces you to think deep about your USPs and to place benefits above products in your promotion. All in all, well worth doing for lots of reasons….
John Carter
