Do you have an elevator pitch ready to go at a moment’s notice? If the answer is no, you’re missing out on an essential tool in your professional repertoire. A good elevator pitch can tell a story about you and your work in just a few spoken or written sentences. Even if you don’t use it very often, getting into the habit of boiling your projects or ambitions down into a small, easy to digest form is a good practice to maintain. It helps you clarify and understand what’s important.
Follow the tips below to make an elevator pitch that will hopefully take you straight to the top.
Know the Structure
There are several different ways to structure an elevator pitch, but most pitches have a mix of these components:
- An introduction. This is where you explain who you are and what you do.
- A hook. This is what draws them in. It could be a compelling question, a surprising fact, a problem to solve.
- A problem. What problem or issue does your pitch address?
- A solution. How will you solve the problem? What value do you bring to your target audience?
- A call-to-action. What’s the next step if they want to move forward if they want to get to know you more?
Not all elevator pitches need to follow this order. You may find that it works better to lead in with the hook and then introduce yourself, or perhaps you want to open with a problem and expand from there. An elevator pitch isn’t a skeleton key that unlocks all doors; you have to shape each one to be a good fit for its intended audience.
There’s also the issue of time. An ideal elevator pitch can be delivered in 30 seconds to a minute. Maybe you’ll be given an extra couple of minutes depending on the situation. You should prepare multiple versions of your pitch: a short 30-60 elevator pitch, and then have a slightly longer one in your back pocket for occasions when you have more time to elaborate. If you’re writing an elevator pitch for an email, keep it to 50-200 words. It should take about as much time to read it as to say it. Keep in mind that the elevator pitch is like the trailer for a movie: it’s a short, catchy ad for the real thing.
“Once you develop your pitch, you should practice it periodically,” said Gina Pinch, Rio Salado College faculty chair for Business, Management, and Public Administration. "Practicing regularly helps you feel more confident and makes your pitch sound smooth and natural instead of stiff or rushed."
Sharpen Your Hook
One of the most important parts of an elevator pitch is the hook. Do you know how magpies are attracted to shiny things and will swoop down to pick them up and put them in their nests? That is what a hook does for your pitch. It is the thing that grabs people’s attention, compels them, makes them want to hear you out. If you don’t have a hook, you don’t have a pitch.
When crafting a pitch, ask yourself what is the one thing you want people to take away from it. If they can only remember one thing, what is that essential skill or value you’re pitching? If you’re pitching yourself at a job interview, you need to go in knowing what your number one quality is so you can set it as your hook. If you’re not sure what the hook is, run your elevator pitch by someone you trust: a friend, valued co-worker, or mentor. Ask them afterward what stood out to them the most. What made them lean in, want to ask questions, stoked their curiosity? If the answer is “nothing,” you’ll have to keep brainstorming and revising until something sticks.
A good rule of thumb with hooks is to keep them simple. The rest of the pitch should expand upon the hook, adding depth and clarity to the idea. You want the hook itself to be simple as that will cut down on the risk of it being confusing or opaque to your listener. If you’re having trouble boiling the complexity of your pitch down to a single sentence hook, consider making your hook a question. What problem or issue does your pitch address? What mystery does it solve? Present that dilemma or mystery as the hook and then use the rest of your time to offer up a compelling answer.
Slow Down
This will sound counterintuitive considering the brevity of an elevator pitch but you don’t want to go too fast when you’re presenting it. Talking too fast increases the risk of being misunderstood by the other person- even if your pitch is very straight-forward, there’s always the possibility that they miss a crucial detail (especially if you’re pitching at warp speed). You’re not giving them enough time to process what you’re saying. There’s also the risk that YOU will forget something important in your rush to get the pitch out. Think of the times in your life where you were in a hurry, left your home, and realized you forgot something important behind. That same “oh no, I forgot my keys!” regret could hit you if you speed through your pitch.
Another reason why a slow, measured delivery matters is that it projects confidence. This is a piece of advice that comes straight from acting legend Michael Caine. In his book on acting, Caine makes the observation that fast talking often reads as insecurity to other people—fast talkers talk fast because they’re worried they’ll lose the attention of their audience, so they’re racing to get everything they need to say out there before the other person tunes out. A slower, calm talker reads as confident: they know they have your attention and aren’t concerned with losing it.
Remember: an elevator pitch is short, so you have time to do it right. Use that time wisely and don’t short-change yourself if you don’t need to.
Cut the Fat
To quote an old TV show: “just the facts.” An elevator pitch doesn’t offer you much room to go on tangents or stretch things out, so you need to trim the fat off your presentation. Be ruthless: cut out anything that doesn’t serve the pitch. This is especially the case when you craft the introduction portion of the pitch. At some point, you’ll need to talk about yourself. Who are you? Why are you the right person to do whatever it is you are pitching? What are your qualifications? These are questions you’ll want to address early on and get out of the way quickly. The good news is that you can usually bundle these questions together: a good introduction can say in a sentence or two both who you are and what you do. Only share facts about yourself that are relevant to the pitch you’re making.
With all that being said, sometimes a quick joke or brief anecdote can be a good way to break the ice and set a relaxed mood for your pitch. If you’re going to do that, treat it like you would a powerful spice in your home cooking: use it sparingly. A little bit of humor can go a long way; too much and that’s all that people will remember about your pitch.
Consider Your Audience
A pitch isn’t made in a vacuum. You’re addressing someone else, presumably to win them over to your side. When crafting an elevator pitch, you need to keep your target audience in mind. What do they value? What are their needs and how will your particular pitch fulfill them? How are you the solution to their problem? If you can answer that question in a concise, direct, and easy to comprehend manner, that’s more than half the battle.
You should also think about the environment you’ll be pitching in. Is it a very formal office setting? Or is it something more casual and relaxed? You’ll need to adjust your tone and style of presentation depending on the level of formality.
Watch Your Hands
Returning once again to Michael Caine, another important thing to watch out for with public speaking is gesticulating too much. According to Caine, waving your hands around too much during a conversation can be very distracting. All that nervous gesturing can make you ill at ease and unfocused. Even if you sound confident and pitch in a smooth way, if your body language reads as tense or uncomfortable it can undermine your performance.
When making your elevator pitch, refrain from making unmotivated physical movements. Walk when it's impactful, gesture when it’s meaningful, do things with purpose. Keep your back straight and make regular eye contact. Avoiding eye contact entirely can make you look nervous and even untrustworthy; it can be seen as a “tell” that you don’t believe what you’re saying. As with many things, though, eye contact is best done in moderation. Too much sustained eye contact on one person can feel invasive.
One trick to get around this is to use focal points, an acting technique where you pick a spot in the room that’s slightly above the heads of the audience- maybe a fire alarm on the wall or a poster or a coffee urn on a foldout table. If you’re addressing a large audience, set focal points on different sides of the room.
When you’re making eye contact with the crowd, focus your attention on the focal points. Make “eye contact” with it. This does two things: it makes people in the room think you’re looking at THEM when you look at the thing behind them; it also keeps you from getting psyched out or distracted, which could happen if you make eye contact with a person in the crowd for too long or if you see somebody that reminds you of someone else and it gets you in your head.
End With a Compelling Call
While a sharp and shiny hook is crucial for a good pitch, you aren’t going to reel in the big fish without making a compelling call-to-action (CTA) at the end. If the pitch goes well, you have their interest and attention. The question becomes: what should they do with that interest? What do you want them to do after they hear your pitch? Consider what your goals are and ask yourself what is the next step that your audience can take. Is it to fund your project? Hire you? Join your team? If the ask you’re making is already pretty straightforward, ending your pitch by talking about how they can contact you is a good way to cap things off. A good CTA turns your pitch from monologue to dialogue— you’re ending your part of the conversation and creating a space for them to respond.
Article by Austin Brietta
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