This morning I attended another great event put on by Andrew Ran Wong, organizer of the fantastic NY Entrepreneurs Business Network (NYEBN). The goal of this morning's event was to have breakfast, do a little networking and learn how to develop your elevator pitch. Samuel Liebowitz (The Conscious Consultant) gave us some tips, listened to our pitches and provided constructive feedback.
The elevator pitch is your answer to the "What do you do?" question. It should last 30-60 seconds and should be concise, clear and powerful. If you live in New York, it's extremely useful to have this pitch nailed down for more than just networking. "What do you do?" is usually the first question that gets asked when people meet for the first time. It's funny, I used to hate that, but now that I have my own business, I welcome any opportunity to tell people what I do. You never know who might be a good connection.
My pitch is getting there. It has changed drastically as I've learned more about myself and what I really want to do with my business. I set out to offer both marketing and operations (i.e. bookkeeping) services to small businesses but found that it was a little tough to explain my services and sounding credible with such a broad offering. Not to mention that, although I CAN do bookkeeping and do it well, it's not exactly how I want to spend my days!
I've discovered that what I really love to do is learn the essence of a business and weave that into all the different ways that a company communicates with clients and prospects -web content, social media, newsletters, emails, etc.
Adjusting my pitch to reflect this focus was easy enough. Now I should probably get started on narrowing down the service offering on my website. In the meantime, if someone contacts me for bookkeeping services, I probably won't turn them down ;-)
***Something to think about: What if the questions was "Who are you?" instead of "What do you do?" What would your elevator pitch be then?***
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