#93: This Is What Makes a Great Elevator Pitch

0:00There's almost nothing more valuable to build your business than having a good elevator pitch. I'm talking about a scripted elevator pitch that when somebody asks what you do, you can just recite it. We spend all this money on marketing, messaging, brand style guides, all that kind of stuff. But words are the reason that people actually buy your product. And if you use the right words, your business will grow. We've all seen it done on Shark Tank, right? Those guys come out, they have the best elevator pitch. What you don't know about Shark Tank is they have coaches who coach every contestant to come on and give that pitch, to make it entertaining, make it interesting, and actually get it down to 30 to 60 seconds.

0:41That is what makes those investors interested. It's what makes good television. The whole idea is invite customers into a story in which they use your product to solve their problem and do so in a very short period of time. If you're watching this video or listening to this episode of the podcast, I'm going to give you a really great formula for an elevator pitch. You're listening to the StoryBrand podcast based on Donald Miller's bestselling book, Building a StoryBrand. The StoryBrand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea. Your customer is the hero and you are their guide.

1:19Each week on the podcast, you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and grows your business. Now let's dive in with your host, Donald Miller.

1:35Promise me this, if you watch the rest of this video and you create an elevator pitch, don't wing it anymore. Stop winging it. When somebody asks about your product, have a scripted response. Now it's going to feel a little bit, you know, formal at first or awkward coming out of your mouth because it's scripted. It'll feel that way about the first three or four times you recite it. The fourth or fifth time, it's just going to be natural, and that's the point that you want to get to. You also want to get to that point with every one of your team members, especially your sales team. You want to give every member of your sales team$100 when they can recite the elevator pitch word for word and it feels natural.

2:13A hundred bucks, it's a great reward. It's also a great way for you as the leader to make your sales team do something without coming off as a dictator, right? You just want to incentivize the behavior of reciting a very good elevator pitch. All right, it's really hard to get people's attention, but a very clear pitch, not a salesy pitch, not a sleazy pitch, but a very clear pitch will get their attention. So how do you get their attention? you actually use the right words. Before I get to the formula for an elevator pitch, let me give you a free tool. It is my StoryBrand Messaging Canvas. It is out there on the internet.

2:50It is free. You can actually get it at messagingcanvas.com. What the StoryBrand Messaging Canvas is, it's a tool that allows you to get your entire messaging and marketing plan on a single sheet of paper, and it looks like this. This is being used by a lot of businesses to clarify their marketing. There are several parts of it, and the elevator pitch is one of those parts. I'll get to that in a second. You scroll down a little bit on that single sheet of paper, your five foundational soundbites. These are the plot points of your story. When you tell your story, inviting customers into a story, these are the soundbites that you want to use.

3:29These are foundational soundbites because you're going to use them in your landing pages, your websites, your pitch decks, your proposals. Gosh, just all over the place. your trade booth, signage, all of that kind of stuff. You get those sound bites that you're going to use from your five foundational sound bites. Then you take your five foundational sound bites, which do take a little bit to create. It's going to take a little bit of work for you to get there, but you create those sound bites and you use them in your three cornerstone tools, your tagline, elevator pitch, brand story. I've got a video on how to create a great tagline, a video that you're watching now on how to create a great elevator pitch, and a video on how to create a brand story.

4:07Those are your three cornerstone tools. Your tagline is the controlling idea of your entire organization. It is the one line that you want to repeat over and over. Just like magic words, they will grow your business. Your elevator pitch is what you say when somebody asks what you do. You and I are going to write that in a second. Your brand story is the paragraph that invites the customer into a story. When somebody wants to know the story of your company, Don't tell them the story of your company. Instead, use your brand story, which positions the customer as the hero, you as the guide, and positions them as the one who uses your tool or your product in order to win the day.

4:46What we're focusing on in this video is cornerstone tool number two, your elevator pitch. So, your elevator pitch is the clearest way to communicate your offer. It is the clearest way to communicate your offer. you don't want to mess around with this. You want it memorized. When somebody needs to know what's in it for them, this is what you say. All right, let's go. The parts of a good elevator pitch, there are three parts to it. They happen to correlate with how to invite somebody into a story. You always want to start with the problem. So part one of your elevator pitch is the problem. Why do we start with the problem?

5:23Because the problem is the hook. Human beings are problem solving machines and we over index on problems versus opportunities. What I mean by that is the human brain is designed to survive. It's designed to keep you on the planet. It is designed to keep you alive. In order to stay alive, you have to pay much more attention to threats and negativity than you do to optimism and positivity. The brain wants to figure out what the threats are, what the problems are in order to solve those problems so it can stay alive, so that it can survive, so that can be happier, so they can get better sleep, all that kind of stuff, it is always going to pay more attention to problems.

6:03That's why when you read a novel, every single page is the hero having a problem. If you watch a movie, every single scene is usually about a hero having a problem. I just took my five-year-old daughter to the new Paw Patrol movie yesterday. So I decided, let me just study this. I wanted to find out how many seconds would go by between conflict. So the Paw Patrol guys, dogs are in conflict. It was basically Paw Patrol meets Jurassic Park. That's what that new movie is. And I'm watching this and, you know, the dinosaurs are chasing them and they escape into a cave where they're all really comfortable.

6:43And I started counting seconds from the time that the conflict ended to the time that the new conflict began. It never went more than three seconds. They're in the cave, they breathe a sigh of relief, and then a rock falls down, and now they're stuck in the cave. I mean, three seconds. Why? Because the human brain does not pay attention to positive, optimistic, everything is okay kind of messages. It pays attention to conflict. That is why when somebody says, tell me about your product or tell me about your brand, You want to say, well, a lot of people struggle with this. Or you know how tiring it is, too.

7:17Or you know how dangerous it is, too. Or did you know that 10 years can be taken off your life if you, you know, eat, whatever. Those are problem statements, and that is what people pay attention to. So never say, well, I'm the CEO of, or I started a company, or I work for. That's not a problem. The problem needs to be the customer's problem. A lot of people struggle with. A lot of people are tired up. That is how you start your elevator pitch. And as soon as you start with that negativity, that problem statement, people lean in. They want to know more. You've opened a story loop. That's the second thing that the problem does.

7:56It opens a story loop. As soon as I say a lot of people struggle with, the obligatory statement or the obligatory scene in the story needs to be you saying they don't have to struggle with it anymore. As soon as I say a lot of small businesses are paying way too much in taxes, more than they need to, I am obligated to tell you how that problem gets resolved. And I've opened a story loop and you're interested in hearing more. Do you ever wonder why some marketing instantly grabs your attention while other marketing you just ignore? It's not about luck. It's not about a bigger budget. it's that the marketing that works actually follows just a few simple principles that actually makes it easier to understand, makes it memorable, and most important, impossible to overlook.

8:41That's why StoryBrand has a free guide, the four rules of messaging that will teach you those principles. In just a few minutes, you'll have a simple framework for evaluating every message you create from your website and emails to your ads and sales conversations. Download your free copy of those four rules today by clicking the link in the show notes. The second thing that you want to do is position the product as the solution to the problem. A lot of small business owners are paying way more in taxes than they legally have to because they don't understand the 23 loopholes available legally to them to cut their taxes.

9:21We at our accounting firm take care of those 23 loopholes and we make sure you're taking advantage of all of them. Problem, solution. So part two is positioning the product as the solution to the problem. Then you want to get everybody a vision of what life looks like after they solve that problem. So you cast a vision, which we call the end result. So basically you put them together. Most small businesses are paying way more in taxes than they legally have to. It's because they don't know about the 23 tax loopholes that are legally available to every small business at my accounting firm, we make absolutely sure before we file your taxes that you've taken advantage of all of those so that you have more money in the bank, more money to grow your business, more money to pay employees, more money to get the life that you want after you file taxes.

10:11Part one, part two, part three. That is an effective elevator pitch. It's a truncated story narrative that people respond to because their brain is trying to organize the answer to your question, what do you do? The brain is already trying to organize it into a story format. So the harder it has to work to figure out what problem you solve, right? How you solve that problem and what my life looks like after you solve the problem, the harder you make them work to put those three ideas together, the less interesting your elevator pitch actually is. So these are the three parts. All right. Let me give you a few examples of really great elevator pitches.

10:56Here's one for a nonprofit. Some of you are not for profit businesses. Let me give you one for a nonprofit. Most people want to help a family get off the street, but never know if their money did anything. Forty dollars a month covers a night of housing and a caseworker visit. And we send you that family story the day they get their keys. So you see exactly what your generosity built. Do you feel how clean that is for a nonprofit pitch? That makes me go, oh, I'd love to give$1 ,000 to this because they are solving a problem. They're telling me how they solved the problem, and they're telling me what their life, the victim's life, plus my life looks like after I donate to this nonprofit.

11:37So if you have a nonprofit, make sure you're doing it this way. What problem are you helping people solve? How are you helping people solve it? And then what does that victim's life look like plus my life look like after I help them solve the problem? It's a very good elevator pitch. Let's look at business to business. Most freight brokers give you a quote and then go quiet. We assign one person to your account who calls you before you have to call us. So your team stops chasing shipments and gets back to selling. This is fantastic. I mean, most people would have gone off for minutes explaining what this logistics company does.

12:16They do it in a quick, short elevator pitch. You need a good elevator pitch. Listen, it's not going to be that easy to write it. You need to write your five foundational soundbites first. Those five foundational soundbites need to obey the four rules of messaging. That's all on your messaging canvas. And then you need to write your tagline, your elevator pitch, and your brand story using your five foundational soundbites. It makes the process of clarifying your message so much easier. All right, where to use your elevator pitch? You want to use your elevator pitch anytime somebody asks what you do.

12:52Put it right under your logo if you have place, your homepage hero section, the bottom of your email signature, and everybody on your staff's email signature, your social media bios, the sign-off on every ad, your packaging booth banners, the opening slide of your pitch decks, your swag, in-house or in your on-hold messaging, and the theme of all of your campaigns itself should be that elevator pitch. So make sure to download the StoryBrand Messaging Canvas, and you can do that at messagingcanvas.com. If you don't know how to explain what it is that you offer in a few short sentences, I guarantee you it's costing your business.

13:33Go to messagingcanvas.com, download that canvas, write an elevator pitch that works and customers will be attracted to your business they will understand your offer and orders will go up thanks for listening to the story brand podcast no matter where you are in your marketing and messaging journey get the tools the training and the support you need to start clarifying that message at storybrand.com and don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode and if you're watching on youtube hit that subscribe button and then leave a comment letting us know what resonated with you and what we can unpack to help your business grow in a future episode.

14:12Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.