Say what?
Yep. Do you speak elevator?
Think of these instances:
- You’re at a Chamber networking event
- You’re at a business seminar at break time
- You’re at a neighborhood BBQ
- You’re at a community volunteer event
How do you answer when you’re asked What do you do?
If you spoke elevator, you would know how to seize the moment. You would capitalize on the opportunity by intriguing a potential customer or business contact. You would be able to WOW your new “friend”. No sputtering or plain vanilla responses.
So how does a person speak fluent elevator?
First of all, you should know what elevator speak is for.
- It answers the question So what? It does so by offering a brief description of what you do, “who” you do it for and how you solve your “who’s” problems. It’s short and sweet. It rolls off your tongue even at 3:00 am when awakened from a deep sleep!
- Fluent elevator speak buys you time so that you can continue the conversation to see if your new contact is someone you’d like to work with or do business with. It also starts the “know, like and trust” phases of your marketing message. Once you’ve created curiosity about what you offer, you can easily turn the spotlight onto the other person to find out about her to see if there is a “good fit”.
- You should have several elevator fluencies – depending on where you will be or with whom you’re going to be chatting.
- Your elevator speak must be coordinated with your overall marketing strategy – it should fit in with your USP (unique selling proposition) or your core marketing message.
Second, understand how to optimally structure your elevator talk …
for the greatest, money attracting impact. Elevator speak has two parts: identifying your “WHO” and telling how you solve the problem, frustration or need your WHO has. You know you’ve created a great one when the person hearing what you just said asks, “Really, how do you do that?”
Third, here are some guidelines for creating attention grabbing elevator speak (marketing message):
- Identify your target market – your WHO
- Identify the problem, frustration, or want you solve for your WHO
- Follow this pattern:
- action verb -I teach, I show, I help
- your who – entrepreneurs, home owners, teachers
- your solution – how to ___________ (your solution)
- Some examples are -
- I teach entrepreneurs how to become big fish in a small rich, pond.
- I show home owners how to save money by refinancing their mortgages.
- I make weight loss easy.
- Create a reply to “Really, how do you do that?”
- this is where you tell your listener, potential customer how you plan to solve her problem
- you tell them the unique way you provide them their solution or benefit.
- here’s an example: “Well, we have developed a social media marketing strategy especially for local business owners that puts them in the top 3 positions on Google. What this does is build the owner’s street cred ….”
So, what will speaking elevator do for you?
A captivating elevator speech will help you attract more people to you and what you have to offer. When you create your marketing message with these guidelines in mind, your create curiosity in your listener where he’ll want to know more. This type of message alone can get you more referral appointments. Who would you rather meet with: someone who wants to sell you something or someone who wants to show you how to make more money or make you famous in your local market?
By applying these tactics to “speak elevator” more fluently, you’ll be miles ahead of most of your competition. You’ll also generate more referrals from anyone you meet. And as a result you’ll have more potential customers to talk with. Which eventually leads to making more money.
And definitely that is much more fun and cool than “cold calling”!
