A number of articles usually talk about what we have to do in an elevator pitch, but never what can be avoided or what common mistakes people make. The article by Kimberly D.Elsbach in the Harvard Business Review provides much insight into the “art” of elevator pitches. I especially liked the section on how to kill your elevator pitch!
The different category types ‘the showrunner’, ‘the artist’ and ‘the neophyte’ are useful in understanding which category one falls into and identifying the strong and weak areas of one’s personality. The first time I gave an elevator speech was for a presentation skills class. The situation was to make a pitch to a client who would be a potential employer. Since, I find it very hard to talk about myself I decided to sing a song which described some of my qualities. I don’t think it was a great idea but it was a good experience. I think I fall in the category of Neophytes, I am too shy to talk about myself and want to involve the other person into the conversation too. This time when I work on my elevator pitch I plan to speak more openly and go beyond what I have been doing before. In my opinion one of the hardest thing to do is to talk and simultaneously convince someone about yourself and your idea in a few minutes!!!
I have been listening to a number of elevator pitches online and been pondering if an elevator pitch should be technical (depending on the audience) or just catchy enough to attract the attention of the audience? What do you guys think?
I'd say it's strictly a function of your audience. However, if your audience is very diverse I'd avoid going too much into technical details and would save them for the Q&A part (some backup slides for this purpose would be nice, too!).
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