I recently picked up a book on a new sales program and how to implement it. With most of these books, I can glean a nugget or two and think about it how it can enhance my own program. This book, not so much.
However, I took the book and read the part where it stated what you should do if someone asks: “What do you do?” After reading the two paragraphs to my group in The Action Suite, there were some interesting reactions.
One person was faking that he was asleep. Another was leaning way back in their chair looking skyward whereas someone else simply stated: “I feel that I have just been verbally puked on.”
My first reaction was: “Okay, happy I wasn’t the only one and had not gotten jaded about other programs.” However, it was a great reminder to review how to stop verbally vomiting on your prospects.
Their introduction was obviously their ‘elevator pitch.’ The challenge is that they never got invited into the elevator, therefore, why would you subject a prospect, who may need your services, but is now turned completely off because you just vomited all over them?
“How does one get invited?” you may be asking. The way I teach it is, make a very compelling and powerful introduction statement where you draw them in with curiosity and interest. This introduction, the Power Statement we work on it together, sometimes for a long time, can not be more than 10 words. My own is; ‘Deliver profits and productivity by aligning behaviours, attitudes, and techniques.’
Ten words with two very important ones; profits, productivity’ Which usually gets a response of: “Can you tell me more?” or “That sounds interesting, what is it all about?” There is my invitation to deliver the elevator pitch.
An elevator pitch should never last more than 57-seconds and has to be about some of the challenges that the prospect may be facing and about them which at the end, must include a call to action from the prospect. It is not about you puking about all the great things you and your company can do. Once you make it about you and not about them, you are losing them.
The whole objective of the elevator pitch is to be able to set an appointment. I am currently working with a Corporate client teaching their new business development team how to deliver their elevator pitch in less than 23-seconds because that is all the time they are going to get. They have field tested it and it is working wonderfully as they are getting way more appointments than straight out no’s.
The most critical step in the whole process is the 10-word introduction for the invitation to deliver the 57-second elevator pitch. Without permission, you have no right to verbally vomit all over them. If you do proceed without the permission, just be aware that you will be turning them off and they will call for a cleanup on aisle four.
Would you like a ‘power statement’ and a 57-second elevator pitch of your own? Click on The Action Suite which by the way its’ ‘power statement’ is: ‘Where the talking stop and the doing gets done.’
Verbal communication is all about quality, not quantity.