Your Elevator Pitch Is Killing Your First Impression

Most people either have no elevator pitch or they have one that sounds like they swallowed their LinkedIn bio. Neither works. JP breaks down what a real elevator pitch sounds like — conversational, clear, and built to invite questions instead of ending them — with specific examples for people in oil and gas, energy tech, and sales.

Transcript

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Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to a new lead with confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. And you are here, you are here in this, in this, I don't even know what I'm rambling right now, but let's talk about this. What this are, what these episodes are, these are 10 minutes or less for you to help level up your soft skills. And soft skills are so crucial to a career success because that's 85% of our career success are soft skills. This is how you communicate, influence, and connect with those around you. And today we are diving into your elevator pitch and why it's so crucial to have one. All right. And if I'm giving you this in 10 minutes, I would love for you to take 15 seconds, go out there, leave a review, leave a comment, tell me what soft skills that you would like me to cover so we can dive into that. I love seeing this getting downloaded all across the globe. Um it's just exciting. It's something I started new about three weeks ago. And it's just kind of cool seeing the impact. We've passed 500 downloads. That might not sound a lot, but it's pretty impressive. Only be doing this for three weeks. So I'm loving seeing this impact those around you. Let's talk about elevator pitch, okay? So for the first three years of owning my own companies, I did not understand the importance of an elevator pitch. I would often just ramble about what we did. Hey, what do you do, JP? Oh, I do this, I do that, we do a little bit of this, we do that. It sounded like a feature dump. It sounded like my LinkedIn profile, but that's not an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch should not list out, it should not be a brochure of features that I do. Because the next thing you know, number one, I'm disconnecting the person from engaging me. But the second thing is it's very me focused, and I sound like I'm rambling a lot, like I am right now, but that's okay. It's my podcast. But it sounds like you're rambling. An elevator pitch really does need to kind of introduce who you are and the value you bring in 30 seconds or less. Okay. And if you start practicing, and the thing is though, I don't want you to think about, oh, once I'm in the room or once I'm around people, I'll introduce myself, then I'm gonna, then I'll kind of deliver my elevator pitch, or I'll figure it out once I get to that uh situation or scenario. Don't wait for when you need to build your uh skill sets. Build them before that actual event. You're not gonna take golf lessons the day you have to tee off your, you know, a round of golf. You're gonna actually be taking golf lessons before. You're gonna practice your skill set before, before we have to tee off that day. So let's work on your elevator pitch until, you know, throughout the day, the weeks and all that stuff until the networking event. That way, once you get to the event, it's much more smooth, calm, and confident. Okay. So don't, okay, so let's kind of get into this right now. So, first off, when it comes to your elevator pitch, you wanna be rememberable and you don't want to bore the other person, have them disconnect, okay? So, really quick, the first thing you have to do, list what you do in plain English. Don't put all these buzzwords in it. I see so many times that people in this industry, in a lot of industries, once they get in this the elevator pitch, they're gonna start using words like efficiencies, you know, B2B, efficiencies, uh, you know, uh, you know, reduced costs, all that stuff. That is such a blanket statement that a lot of people say. And you're coming across very much like your competition. Excuse me. So try not to have a lot of jargon. Try not to have a lot of buzzwords and oh but bitch. Just be very clear, like you're talking to like a fifth grader about what you do. Okay. The second thing about uh your elevator pitch is who do you do it for? Right. So for example, um, my name is uh JP Warren. I have a lead with uh confidence podcast, I coach teams so I can help them advance their careers so they show up with more confidence in their soft skills, right? So I'm helping professionals, students, executives strengthen their soft skills so they can show up more confident, okay? So talk about kind of who you help and how you help them, all right? And the third thing is the closing is kind of the invite. Hey, you know, I love working with teams about you know their soft skills and all stuff. What are some areas that you're kind of struggling with, or your team's kind of struggling when it comes to their communication skills or their presentation skills, right? And you just kind of start diving into that and then you open up the conversation, okay? So you got it's like this, right? Who are you? So it's who are you, who you help, how you help them so they can do what, right? So who are you? Plain English, who do you help? Who do you actually, the customers you call on, the companies you do, the solutions you provide, how you help them so they can do what? Once you start kind of practicing this, think about this in four chunks, right? Who are you, who you help, how you help them, so they can do what? You start feeling that without the industry jargon, very high level, not featured, nothing, not given your LinkedIn bio profile isn't a much more uh effective elevator pitch than it would be if you just kind of go in there and just kind of wing it and just thinking about, I'm gonna list everything that we do, right? I'm gonna bore this person out of that. And you can always engage, you can always kind of engage their interest in your conversation when you ever start talking too much. So keep it light, keep it tight. There, it's not an interview. Who are you? Who do you help? How do you help them so that custom so that target customer can do what? Okay. And again, let's talk about this. I often say, whenever you are practicing your presentation skills, film yourself, okay? Or if you're in a team, a great way to practice this is if let's say you have a team's call or something like that. Take five minutes and go around the room. Hey, let's all practice our elevator pitches, okay? And start helping each other out, strengthen your elevator pitch. Uh practice your elevator pitch to deliver this in the grocery line to a barista, to someone you know, in your office that you kind of need to build your networks with. The more you practice your elevator pitch, the more natural it's gonna be, and it's the more authentic it's gonna come across. You don't wanna feel, it doesn't wanna feel like rehearsed scripted or like you're just trying to remember this. And again, if you're waiting to the day of to practice this, you're too far behind. That's like waiting to the day of to go over your presentation that you're gonna give in an industry conference. You gotta build to that confidence, okay? So let's talk about kind of body language whenever you are delivering your elevator pitch, okay? Smile before you speak, all right? Smile, slow down a little bit. Okay. A lot of times we always rush the conversation whenever we're actually kind of like in the limelight or whenever we're called on. We try to kind of get through our script, slow it down a little bit, okay? Once you slow things down, it's gonna come across a lot more confidence. Confident, you're gonna remember what you're saying and you're gonna remember the delivery that you had to deliver. And remember, smile, okay? And the last thing is, I've always often said this before, said this previously, put your phone away this entire time. Have your phone in your pocket. And after you deliver your elevator pitch, that's when you kind of start having those conversations that are go beyond the, you know, who are you? You know, what do you do, or who do you work for? You can actually start diving in uh better conversations uh that way. So work on your elevator pitch pitch, work on it with your team. Film your elevator pitch, right? Practice it. Do do a bunch of modifications to the elevator pitch until it feels natural, till it feels smooth, until you can go to a fifth grade class and they will understand what you do. Don't do industry buzzwords, don't sound like your LinkedIn profile, don't sound like your company's uh uh LinkedIn profile page, right? Make it authentic, make it genuine, put a little human side behind it, okay? So who are you? What is it? Who are you? Who do you help? Who are you? I don't know why. Uh this is the sixth episode that I'm doing today. So who are you? Who do you help? How do you help them so that they can do what? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. All right, thanks for tuning in to Lead with Confidence. Uh, appreciate you being here again. If you know someone that could actually use this, these types of uh skill sets and frameworks, please feel free to share with them. And we'll see you soon on uh the next episode of Lead with Confidence. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.