I was talking to a friend a few days ago and he mentioned that he was having some difficulty perfecting his elevator speech. It wasn’t long before I realized why. Like most new entrepreneurs, he was eager to tell the whole story about what his company can do and all of the situations that could be improved with his product. On one hand he was right, because he is enthusiastic about a great product and an innovative business model, but on the other hand, he was wrong, because if his prospects get bored before they get to the good part of his story, the chance of them becoming customers is pretty slim.
So how do you avoid making the same mistake? Simply narrow your business down to one sentence. For example, if someone asks what we do, my first answer is “We specialize in helping companies like yours to compete with the bigger companies and win.” Then once I have their attention, I can get into some of the details on how we do what we do or what we’ve done for similar companies.
It’s easy for your enthusiasm to dilute your message, but if you take the time to develop a simple, focused sentence to explain what you do, you’ll have plenty of time to tell your prospects everything about your business.
