Do You Know Your Elevator Pitch?

If you work in sales and you haven't got your elevator pitch prepared, you need to do so now. Your elevator pitch is named as such because it highlights a very limited period of time when you have a captive audience to whom you have the chance to communicate your offer or sales pitch. Looked at in a different way, it is a handy metaphor for reminding you that every opportunity, however small it may appear, is an opportunity not to be missed to communicate your brand. Larger organisations or those with a good marketing strategy will already have defined a company-standard elevator pitch. These will have been designed to contain the key agreed market messages which all employees can use to contribute towards communicating their brand. As a dedicated sales professional, you will find yourself in more potential selling situations than the average employee, so you will need to be able to adapt and tailor your pitch without compromising brand market messages in order to maximise the impact for your audience. While you may be great a reading a situation and quickly interpreting a prospect's purchasing drivers, you don't need to have to think on your feet to deliver the ideal pitch every time. Your experience will have taught you about a lot of common types of interactions and types of clients, so you can have a set of elevator pitches prepared in advance for use in different situations. Using these, you will find it much easier to adapt variations when you are faced with completely new circumstances. Once you have your elevator pitches ready, you need to become skilled at when and where to deploy them. Imagine that you have an elevator pitch about yourself and why you are a great sales person. This might be suitable to use on your first meeting with sales recruitment agencies in Staffordshire. However, it would be inappropriate to use when meeting your partner's parents for the first time. The example is a little extreme but it highlights the need to assess a situation and take account of the purpose of the encounter and its potential to lead to a sale. Returning to the analogy, imagine that your partner's parents are to become the in-laws. Had you indeed made your pitch upon first meeting them, you would not want that to come back to haunt you when they get to know you better and find out you are not everything you claimed to be. So too with your sales elevator pitch — while you will want it to make an impact and leave a lasting impression, you want it to lead to a sales relationship so it must stand up to scrutiny and not claim to promise anything you cannot deliver. As always with successful sales approaches, you want to be honest, knowledgeable and passionate about your subject. Your enthusiasm will be infectious and before you know it you will have your audience engaged. If this is the type of challenge that you thrive on but you don't work in sales, then maybe you should reconsider your career options. You will find that sales recruitment agencies in Staffordshire would love to hear from you and hear your pitch.