This post came about accidentally because of a discussion I’ve been having with a colleague about the Elevator Pitch and how we’ve been trying to use it as part of a vision statement. I say “trying to use it” as my team’s primary service is that of organisational change via agile transformations, and the product isn’t as tangible as real-life products like bicycles, cars etc.
The context we were discussing, was early on in an engagement, soon after when a client “buys an agile transformation from my employer” (and I’ll park my many issues with that statement – see things like this to give you a sense of how long I’ve been carrying that baggage). One of the first tasks is to broaden the awareness of what’s going to happen to the client’s employees and some lightweight communication & broadcasting is a typical medium for starting this awareness drive. As the elevator pitch is a natural fit for lightweight, accessible communication, it’s a fairly obvious choice as one of the tools to be used.
What’s the problem?
One of the common mistakes that I’ve seen with teams producing elevator pitches, is they spend most of their efforts trying to craft the perfect words to get across the sheer breadth and scope of what it is they’re trying to achieve. The work itself is rewarding, as successive iterations of the elevator pitch can heighten the emotional connection between the team and their product. Teams often hope that the energy and enthusiasm that they display while giving the elevator pitch is infectious enough for their audience to engage. To my mind, that approach is inefficient and can be ineffective. I also feel that strategy does not respect the perspective of the listener – there’s a good chance that your listener is not a “willing participant” (i.e. they’re already overworked and there you are trying to pitch something to them – even the apocryphal story of the lift journey has the CTO “trapped” in the lift with you).
Get to the conversation bit already!
A real conversation between two people only really happens when both people are listening. When working with elevator pitches, it’s not certain whether or not your target will actually be interested in listening. While that’s out of your hands, the amount of energy and effort they have to expend to begin listening to you is partially under your control. By lowering the barrier to entry, you have a chance at making it much easier for your target to engage with you. It’s what makes snake oil salesmen so effective – they understand what their victim want to hear, and know how to give that message in a way that’s captivating specifically to them
By making sure your content and your expressions use the language and semantics of the person you’re trying to reach, you drastically reduce the cognitive load that person has in order to understand what you’re saying. Otherwise they’d have to translate what they’re hearing into what they can understand. Which can be hard work, and if they’re not already invested in you, it’s quite easy for them to avoid the effort and delegate the task to one of their direct reports. Which essentially defeats the point of having an elevator pitch in the first place. By putting in the additional effort to make it easy for your target to consume your message, you also demonstrate a degree of respect of your target’s time.
A useful effect of this degree of tailoring of your content, is that aspects that may be unimportant to you would gain prominence in your message if it’s important to your target. Most organisations have very fragmented views on what is important, and a single unifying elevator pitch can be very hard to create, and may not have the impact you desire. By tailoring, you significantly increase the chances of making meaningful connection with your audience, one person at a time.
Use Personas
A good way to start this tailoring, is for you and your teams to create personas representing the people you wish to connect with, and then create tailored elevator pitches for each of these persona. Empathy maps are especially helpful in this regard.
It’s possible (if the personas are different enough) that different personas may prefer different communication channels or media. Some might prefer an informal conceptual discussion over a coffee, while others might like to see more tangible aspects as part of a guided demo. By creating models of your potential audience, you greatly increase the relevance of your content to them.
Amateur Coach 