Help! I Need an Elevator Pitch!!!

When I was in graduate school studying International Relations, the Department decided that we needed a new mandatory course. I forget what it was called, but the subject was, basically, the quantification of International Relations. The professor explained to us, in detail, how numeric values could be assigned to different events and then, by using different formulas, we could make predictions, or some such thing.

At one stage, we asked him to slow down. None of us had studied statistics. It was our first introduction to probability. He did his best and when he was done, he innocently asked us for our thoughts, the entire subject being new to us.

We looked at each other. We were all thinking the same thing because we had pretty much whispered the comment to each other when his back was turned. Finally, someone said, "Professor, it seems to us that some mathematicians or statisticians didn't get tenure so they decided to change departments and try their hands at International Relations. They convinced someone that what is a Social Science could be made into a real science. We're just not buying it!"

We all nodded our concurrence. He thanked us for our honesty. To his credit, in one week, in time for our next class, he had remade the entire course and we liked it and him!

Now what in the world does any of this have to do with elevator pitches?

Well, some people think that an elevator pitch has to be complicated. They feel it needs to be anything but straight forward. They want to turn Social Science into real science. They want to make what they do sound more complicated, more interesting, more important than it really is.

I don't know how I developed the skill, but I'm really good at it. I have never had a complaint. So if I were at a networking event, and wanted to introduce myself in such a way that would lead to a meaningful conversation - the purpose of the elevator pitch, I might introduce myself by saying, "Hi. I'm Dr. Bruce Hurwitz. I'm a surgeon." Of course, I'm not an MD, just a humble Ph.D. And I'm not really a surgeon. I'm just really good at removing splinters! Now the entire criminality of impersonating a doctor (excuse me, physician) aside, all I would be doing would be making a fool out of myself. And that is what people do when they are embarrassed by what they do and want an elevator pitch that obfuscates instead of informs.

Let me give you a real example and then we'll have some fun with a few "what-ifs."

A couple of years ago I was active with the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. I hosted their weekly podcast, chaired a committee, and served on the Board. This meant, among other things, I had to attend many networking events. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed them. But one really sticks out in my mind.

I had invited a friend to this particular event. He was a salesman with 60 or so years of experience. (He started in sales shortly after he returned home from serving in World War II.) As we were chatting, a young man approached us. Instead of waiting for one of us to acknowledge him, which we would have done momentarily, he interrupted us. I remember that I looked at my watch. He told us his name, handed us his business card, and for a minute and a half, which is about a minute and 10-seconds longer than a good elevator pitch should be, he told us about his company and what he did.

I did not understand a word he said. His business card was of no help. I was about to ask him a question when my friend said, "So, you do credit card processing for small businesses." This young man was tall and slender. When he heard what my friend said he literally shrank before our eyes. He went from standing erect to drooping shoulders. He turned on his heels and left.

My friend told me that he had seen it before, with young people starting out on their careers. They accept jobs that they don't really like, that do not make them proud, so they try to find a complicated and exciting way to explain what they do. They try to make their jobs sound important and special and they always fall flat on their faces.

This is not unique. I worked for many years in the non-profit sector and interacted with scores of social workers. Only two ever impressed me. The rest I found to be unreliable, lazy and full of themselves. So when at a meeting of a networking group to which I had belonged, a new member arrived and introduced herself as a "unique" real estate agent, and said that what made her "unique" was that she was trained to listen to people and get to know them, I had a feeling she was another failed social worker. (People who lose their jobs and can't find work in the field for which they were trained, also act like the young man I just told you about.) Sure enough, as she was explaining that unlike other real estate agents she gets to know the client's needs before their wants, her business card reached me and there it was, after her last name, the letters "MSW." I kept quiet. I did not say a word. One person asked her, "Why is it that so many social workers go into real estate? Is it a course taught at Social Work schools?" He wasn't trying to be funny; he was serious. And, sadly, she was embarrassed and never returned. The point is, she embarrassed herself. If she had just said, "I sell residential real estate in the XYZ area of Manhattan, and focus on families looking for the best schools for their children," she would have been fine. That, by the way, is a proper elevator pitch.

You want to say what you do and what makes you special - no one is really unique. But it has to be believable.

To continue with real estate, let's say that the person says, "I sell luxury homes and apartments. My listings always close within 48 hours because I know how to price properties." Well, on the face of it that sounds impressive. But is it believable? Is any agent really so good that all their listings close within two days? How can you prove it? And maybe, if it's true, the reason that they close is because all of their clients are desperate to sell and the agent undercuts the market. So this agent may just be painting themselves into a proverbial corner. What if the prospect says, "Great. I'll sign up with you and give you an exclusive for two days!" What are they going to say, "No?" In an elevator pitch you shouldn't boast unless you can deliver.

Enough real estate. How about computers, programming, IT?

It does not matter if you are at a networking event, meeting with a prospect or responding to an inquiry on social media, the first thing you have to know is to whom you are speaking. If they have no need for your product or service, your goal should be to make a new friend in the hope that it will develop into a future referral or job offer. So let them do most of the talking!

Let's assume that this is a business meeting with a prospect. You own a company that specializes in quality assurance by which I mean, your company can take the code for an app that is not working properly and, within 48 hours, find and fix the problem. Like with the previous 2-day claim, you won't have much credibility, especially since our hypothetical prospect needs help with a very complicated app. But unlike our real estate agent, you have no worries.

Welcome to XYZ Coding Correctors. It does not matter how simple or complicated the app, if there is a problem we can find and fix it within 2 days. Why? Because of our team. The person working on your case will be Autistic. As you may know, persons with Autism see differently than the rest of us. They can instantly spot patterns. In our case, they find what's wrong with the code and then either they, or one of our developers, fixes it.

Now this person has credibility. They would also hopefully be admired for hiring the disabled, although I'm not exactly certain how disabled functioning autistic people really are! So they win on both the credibility and nice-guy scales!

Let me give you one more example. As people who follow me know, I am a speech writer. I recently wrote a very interesting (at least to me!) speech for the owner of a drone company. Drones are great. You can use them to quickly inspect property. Now, of course, you have to know what you are doing. For example, to briefly return to real estate, an agent with a drone could show a prospective buyer the roof of the property. But why? If the roof is falling apart, they are not going to fly the drone. And if the roof looks good, who cares? Unless the buyer works in construction, they won't know what they are seeing. The roof could look great but be far from it. So while it's cute, it's not going to close the deal. What will close the deal is a qualified inspector saying the roof not only looks good but is good.

Now in the case of my client, his drones are used to survey vast areas of equipment. Think oil rigs or solar farms. Using drones, he can inspect in hours what it would take a crew, on the ground, days to complete. So his elevator pitch is, "Using drones, I can save you time and money. Inspections are completed in hours, not days, and instead of a crew, with me, you only need two people." That's an elevator pitch.

So when you are developing your pitch just keep it simple. Say what you do and why you are special. Just make sure it's credible. And don't try to sound like a surgeon when all you do is remove splinters!

(If you are interested, the secret is to soak the affected area with warm salty water until the skin is soft. Then you remove it. A real doctor told me that!)

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Bruce Hurwitz, the Amazon international best selling author of The 21st Century Job Search and Immigrating to Israel, is an executive recruiter and career counselor. He has helped scores (thousands if you include attendees at his presentations) of people, including veterans, not only change jobs but, on occasion, change careers. Having successfully transitioned from academia to non-profits to the recruiting industry, he has been there and done that! A five-star rated speech writer on Fiverr, he is the host and producer of the live-interview podcast, Bruce Hurwitz Presents.