Going Up! How to Develop an Elevator Pitch for Your Business

Wherever you’re at in your entrepreneurial journey, developing and fine-tuning your business’ elevator pitch is one of the most important things you’ll do. Your elevator pitch allows you to give prospects a snapshot of your business. You’ve got only a few sentences to convince prospective customers why they need your product and/or service and why they can’t get what you provide anywhere else.

To kick off the process of developing your small business’ perfect elevator speech, consider these five tips while you brainstorm.

Think about what makes your business unique. You want your product/service to be intriguing to your potential customer(s). Don’t simply state the nature of your business (i.e. “I am a flower shop.”) What makes your business stand out from your competitors’?

Get excited. You should be pumped to talk up your business. What things about your business excite you? Your business is the result of your long hours and hard work — if you have something to be excited about, others will, too!

Don’t get too complicated. You want to keep people’s attention, so make sure your speech is short, sweet and to the point. Develop a clear, focused idea. Make sure your speech is no longer than 30 seconds.

Put in onto paper. Most of us are visual learners. By converting your ideas from thoughts to actual text, your speech will really start to come together.

Write your elevator speech by answering 1, 2, 3 easy questions:

1. What customer “problem” does your small business’ product or service address?
2. How does your product or service solve this problem?
3. What is the main advantage to customers using your product or service?

For example: “Are you looking to send flowers to a loved one, but don’t have the time or patience to ‘weed’ through your choices? Here at Erin’s Flower Shop, we do the hard work for you. By answering a 5-minute questionnaire, we can choose and send your perfect floral arrangement. Nowhere else in the tri-state area lends you one of their flower specialists to help make this decision … for free!”

Practice, Practice, Practice. Learn a lesson from that play you did in Middle School — practice makes perfect. The time you have to give someone your business’ elevator speech is an audition they are giving you to sell them you product or service. You don’t want to mess it up over a silly mistake like getting two sentences reversed so you sound like you’re speaking nonsense. The more rehearsed you are, the less nervous you’ll be, trust me. Soon enough, your elevator speech will become second nature to you.

Do you already have an elevator pitch prepared for your small business? What challenges did you cross along the way? We’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below, or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.