One of the most useful times to have an elevator pitch prepared and ready to go is when you are exhibiting at an event.

We all know events are often very busy and hectic places, and therefore it’s crucial to be able to articulate succinctly what benefits a potential customer might get from working with you and pique their interest just enough to engage in a wider conversation where you can go into more detail, either at or when following up after the event.

What is an Elevator Pitch?

Imagine a potential customer is just passing by your stand, glances are your display, and then turns their attention to you. “What is it exactly you guys do?”, they ask. You panic and start listing some of your many services, which are too numerous to mention. Then, you perhaps start talking about your USP and some recent clients you’ve worked with. The prospective customer is either overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information and by not hearing anything particularly relevant, loses interest and moves on.

This is where an elevator pitch would save the day. An elevator pitch is intended to give just the right amount of information to keep the prospective customer interested and open the door to a wider conversation where you can understand more about them, their business, their current needs, or challenges and then focus on presenting the services most relevant to them and how these services might help meet them.

Creating Your Pitch

Elevator pitches are also sometimes referred to as a “30 second commercial” which is a great guideline for how long your pitch should be.

To prepare your pitch, break it down into four distinct sections:

  • First, introduce yourself, your name and job title or role.
  • Second, talk about your company, very briefly, in a way that fits into two sentences. At this point you are not looking mention specific services that your company provides. However, do cover the kind of industries, sectors, job roles within your clients who you deal with and, if relevant, size of business you supply to. Remember that you are trying to draw the relevance of your company to the potential customer and their business.
  • Third, make two or ideally, three statements about the kind of customers you work with. State the challenges your typical customers have, the kind of impact it has on their business and the reasons it drove them to engage with your services. As much as you might want to jump into the specifics of how your services or products resolve these challenges, it would lengthen the pitch, so hold off.
  • Finally, don’t leave your pitch as a statement, so actively present a question back to them. A great way to verify that you have successfully pitched your company and services to them is to simply ask, “does any of this sound familiar?”.

Hopefully, this then opens the conversation for you to find out more about them, so that you can understand their requirements and cover the products and services you have that are more specific to their needs.

Final Thoughts

Putting time into preparing and practicing your pitch will pay dividends at events allowing you to make the most of your limited time there, opening the door for wider conversations with customers who are already aware that your products and services are solving problems in businesses just like theirs.

However, remember not every visitor to your stand is relevant to your business as a customer. Not only will a great elevator pitch help you engage with the right customers, it also will help you identify those for whom you don’t have any relevant products or services quickly.

It’s important to note though that as with all networking opportunities the person you are speaking to may know another business who have need of your products and services and introduce you. Having an effective elevator pitch means that even visitors who do not require your services directly, understand enough about what you do to refer you on.

 

For more helpful tips for exhibiting and event planning, visit ExpoBeacon Insights and news.