Lesson 8 - Write an Elevator Pitch

Get the companion study guide for all episodes — packed with practical assignments, templates, and key takeaways at thedailyquota.com

In this lesson, you’ll craft a concise and compelling elevator pitch that communicates the value of your product in under 30 seconds. This skill is essential for grabbing attention and starting productive conversations. Your assignment will involve writing your elevator pitch, practicing it out loud, and getting feedback from your manager or a peer.

Transcript

0:00

Nicholas, welcome back to the daily quota. I'm your host, Nicholas Hill, and in today's lesson, you're going to write an elevator pitch. This is where we bring all of the previous lessons together, learning, taking what you've learned from your informational interviews, from your forums and webinars and newsletters, from your kind of basic training into your prospects roles, from the mapping out of the buying committee and understanding your persona, building your persona cards like the reason that we've been doing all of this is so that we can truly understand how best to tailor your solution to your prospect, and that is what we're going to be doing with our elevator pitch. Now you've probably heard of the concept of an elevator pitch. Typically, this is a pitch of your solution that you would give in less than three minutes that gives the high level value of why your solution exists and what problems it solves. So the way that I like to think of an elevator pitch is you're not trying to explain your product in less than three minutes. You're trying to get them interested in learning more about your product in less than three minutes. So I kind of liken it to the concept of a movie trailer. A movie trailer doesn't give you the entire plot of the movie. It makes you want to see the movie, and that's exactly what an elevator pitch is designed to do. So when you think about your elevator pitch, your goal is to intrigue, not to sell, and the way that you do that is to talk about things that are relevant and tailored and engaging for the person that you're talking to. So you need to craft a pitch with their needs in mind, and that's why we've waited until now to actually craft your first elevator pitch of your solution, you should now have a basic understanding of what your prospects want to hear. So let's think about the do's and don'ts of an elevator pitch. This is a less than it should be, short and succinct, less than three minutes. Some people will say less than two. Some people will say less than one. In my opinion, less than three minutes is fine. Two you need to start by setting the scene of the problem. So instead of just saying, Hey, have you heard of our solution? Our solution exists to help you do X, Y, Z, you would start by saying, hey, you know some one of the problems that we've seen out there is x, and we've noticed that this problem is having a huge impact in across companies in your industry, and we've actually worked with several people to help solve these problems. See, we've created a solution that exists to XYZ, right? So what I'm doing there, and I realized that was just kind of off the cuff, but what I'm doing there is I'm saying you, you have an issue that needs to be addressed, and we have a solution that was designed to address that issue, but I need to start by making sure we're aligned on what that issue is, and that's what I mean by setting the scene. And we'll talk about that when we do our example. Two, you need to highlight what makes your solution unique. So if I'm selling for zoom, I wouldn't just say Zoom is a video conferencing tool that they're gonna say, Okay, so is Microsoft Teams Slack has video conferencing. I mean, there's, there's, there are so many other ways that I can do video conferencing. Why would I need zoom? You need to talk about your differentiators. You need to talk about reliability. You need to talk about asynchronous features. You need to talk about breakout rooms and chat and recordings, and, you know, being able to organize calls in advance, and all of the different things that makes zoom unique. So you would be talking about your product and really honing in on the things that make your product a differentiated solution from your competitors. You need to include some sort of a proof point, if you can, if your products brand new, don't lie, but you should be including something to let them know. Hey, don't just take my word for it. You know me the biased salesperson, right? You we've done this with Hewlett Packard. We've done this with IBM. We've done this with Apple. I don't know why. I can only think of tech companies. You know, we've done this with General Electric or General Motors. So you need to be throwing out proof points of organizations that you've worked with to let them know it doesn't have to be a specific proof point. You can talk about how many users you have. You can talk about third party review. Use or rewards that your product has won, but you need to be letting them know some in some form or fashion, why your product is is so successful, or why you can be trusted. So add a proof point, and then end with a clear call to action, right? You don't just want to say thanks for listening, right and then walk away. You should be ending with, you know, I'd really mark. I'd love to tell you more about this. Would you have 30 minutes next week? I'd love to jump on a call with you and talk to you a little bit about how we can help your business, right? So end with a clear call to action. Three don'ts, three things that you should not do. Don't avoid jumping directly into the product and especially not into product specifics. Which leads me into number two, you should not be getting into specific product features. You should not be screen sharing. You should not be demoing. That's not the goal of an elevator pitch, right? The goal of an elevator pitch is to quickly and at a high level while demonstrating value. Talk about your solution. So don't demo anything. Don't get into like security and compliance specifications unless they're really highly relevant. Don't get into nitty gritty features that are only relevant to end users. And then the third one is steer clear of jargon or overly technical language, right? For the same reasons, you don't want to, you don't want to turn this into a dry lecture, right? You want this to be something that is streamlined, succinct, not confusing to your listener. I think those are the big ones. When I think about do's and don'ts. Let me give you example, an example. I'm gonna actually read this example to make sure that I get it right, that I don't stumble it. But I'm gonna give you an example, elevator pitch for sprout. We've been using sprout as an example this entire time, so why not? Sprout is social, a social media platform, and for this example, we're going to be pitching to a social media marketing manager. So I might say, you know, Mark, thank you so much for meeting with me. I really appreciate your time. My name is Nick, and I work for sprout. And you know, one of the problems that we've seen mark is that trying to engage your product's community on social media has become more difficult than ever. There are dozens of social media platforms out there. They're all serving a different audience. Each one has their own peak times, content style, interaction roles, different guidelines for monetization or sponsorship or working with influencers, and it can be really overwhelming as a social media team to understand which ones to prioritize, what the rules are for each one, and how to engage in an efficient way. And we know that time is of the essence. Studies show that consumers of social media have a shorter attention span than ever before, and marketing and social media teams are having to do more with less. At Sprout Social we streamline this chaos with simple, powerful tools that help you manage all of your social media efforts from one place. What makes sprout unique is our advanced analytics and seamless integration with over 20 platforms ensuring not just social presence, but effective engagement too. In fact, when Grammarly adopted sprout, they saw an 80% reduction in time to first response on social media. Biking company trek saw a 1,000% increase in social engagements, and in fact, Sprout Social was just named G 2s number one, best overall software product. So Mark, I would love to set up some time with your team to learn a little bit about the social media marketing challenges that you're facing today and see if Sprout Social can help. Would you be interested in joining me for a quick call next week to learn more? So that's an example of an elevator pitch that I might give for Sprout Social. Is it perfect? No. And if you're watching this from Sprout Social, you might say, Nick you missed this differentiator and this differentiator, and that's not how I would pitch it, and everyone's pitch is going to be unique to their own style. But I want you to get started down this road. I want you to become comfortable talking about your product in a succinct way at a high level to some of your most important stakeholders. So now it's your turn for your assignment. You're going to craft your own elevator pitch. Start by identifying the specific personas that you're addressing. Reflect on what you've learned about this. Personas needs and pain points. Choose a proof point that resonates strongly with this. Personas challenges, the success story, a data point, third party review, etc. And then finally, record yourself delivering this pitch. Record it. Record it. You're going to record it and then listen back to it. I know how easy it is to cringe when you're listening to yourself. I do the exact same thing, but you want to listen to yourself recording this, because that's going to show you your filler words, your gaps, your weak spots. Are you making eye contact? Are you stumbling over your words? It's going to really help you with in those areas. And that's it. One more thing, I would encourage you to share your recording with your manager or your mentor or your new hire buddy. Get a second set of eyes on it. Sometimes it's easier to see to have someone else see things that we're missing and and I would encourage you to lean into radical candor and feedback on your pitch. Remember, this is what's going to go make you money. This is what's going to get you in with customers. This is what's going to get you meetings. This is what's going to get your deals progressed. This is really the first step to becoming a customer facing salesperson. Everything we've done up until now is research. It's mapping out the committees and the personas and learning about what they care about. This is where the rubber hits the road. So really, really, really practice this pitch, hone it in, and then when you're ready, move on to the next lesson. We'll see you next time. Thanks. You.