Why You Need to Develop Your “Elevator Pitch”
We’ve all heard the concept of the “elevator pitch.” If you had 30 seconds riding in an elevator with someone who was crucial to the success of your business, and you had one chance to sell yourself, what would you say?
How can you succinctly encapsulate the best attributes and key points about your company, in 30 seconds or less – without being too wordy, too aggressive, or too overwhelming?
If that idea sounds daunting, what if you had to shorten that speech even further?
You see, the world moves too fast now for elevator pitches. No one has time or the attention span for a 30-second pitch. So one of the things our business consulting services provides to clients is identifying competitive advantage statements – “elevator sentences,” you might say.
These are concise, tightly worded, and rigorously defined positioning statements of the key competitive advantages of your company. This is how you can present your company with confidence and explain what you do best – and most importantly, show why it matters to your customers.
Competitive Advantage Statement Examples (AKA Elevator Sentences):
- Our technicians solve problems in less than 2 hours.
- Our consulting firm helped clients raise over $50 million in venture capital during the past year – a 10% improvement in a year when the industry as a whole was down by 20%.
- Our HR training program helps clients improve their employee retention rates by at least 30%.
- Our law firm gets over 85% of business from repeat clients.
- Our car wash delivers the highest water pressure and longer wash times than any other competitor in town.
- Our interior design team stays on budget 95 percent of the time.
- 90 percent of our business comes from referrals and repeat customers.
- Our gym program has an average of 15 pounds lost in 5 months for over 60% of our members.
Developing Your Competitive Advantage Statements
All of these competitive advantages are concise (one sentence). They are specific – focused on one unique attribute or achievement of the company. And, given, they are relevant to the customers (conduct Market Research to find out).
If you want to get your car washed, it’s relevant to you if one car wash can give you a more powerful spray – and more washing time for your money.
Talking about repeat business and referrals builds credibility. Explaining about how you can outperform your industry or stay on budget 95% of the time helps your customers understand your unique skills and dedication to delivering value.
Smart Advantage business consulting services has helped clients develop their own “elevator pitch” – short, concise, evidence-based statements to encapsulate and promote their own competitive advantages. We do this by meeting with the company’s top leaders, where we brainstorm, discuss and drill down into the fine details of what makes the company unique.
In Chapter Two of Creating Competitive Advantage learn how a commercial realtor replaced his “Elevator Pitch” with his competitive advantage statements – and ended up getting $38 Million of new business. We guarantee to our clients that they will uncover 50-100 competitive advantage statements they did not even know they had!
Smart Advantage can give your company a new vocabulary to describe what you do best, how to measure what you do best, and how to convey that information to your customers in a way that is relevant to them.