Your 60 Second Speech

So here’s a situation for you. You’re shopping at the grocery store for company that’s visiting your house that night; you have a million things going through your head. Someone you haven’t seen in years says hello to you and asks how you are. The subject turns to what you’re doing for a living. What do you tell them? Do you fumble all over your words or do you paint them a perfect picture of your company? Wouldn’t it be great to always have the perfect response to the old question “So what does your company do?” This rehearsed response has been called many names, but my favorite has to be an “Elevator Speech”. It is an absolute must in business to have an elevator speech. What this is exactly is not so much a speech, but a short, well rehearsed verbal description of what you do for a living. The purpose of it is to give the person you meet a great and accurate idea of what you do. It shouldn’t be too long, around 60 seconds or so. If it’s too long, the person will think they just walked into an infomercial and they may get annoyed. The last thing you want to do in any situation is to annoy the person you’re trying to impress. The trick is to inform but not overwhelm. It’s kind of like your favorite food. For me, I really love garlic bread. It’s crunchy and crispy on the outside and soft in the middle and it has that amazing garlic taste that I love. Well if I think that garlic is what makes it great, I could just put ten times the amount in and it would be better right? Well obviously it would be horrible. The same logic can be applied to almost anything, including how you speak to people about your business.

Your elevator speech should be short, catchy and most importantly, memorable. It needs to be promotional, but in a subtle way. It’s at least as important as having business cards and in some ways even more effective. Let’s face it, how many hundreds of business cards do people get? They’re very important but they can be somewhat forgettable simply because of the sheer numbers we all encounter. I would be willing to bet that many people simply don’t have a good elevator speech ready to go. Having a good one will put you clearly above your competition. Belonging to a club or a gym is a great place to use one because you will be constantly exposed to new people every day. I get to use mine on a regular basis and it has helped my business greatly. A good elevator speech is anything but forgettable. If you really work on designing a good one, you will be on that old acquaintance’s mind for the rest of the week. On top of having the body of the elevator speech well designed, make sure you have the answers to any obvious questions ready as well. Just brainstorm any quick questions that you think they will ask and keep them ready. An elevator speech is such a great tool for marketing your business because it works and best of all, it’s free.