In this article, we shall be working on some of the elevator pitch examples that would guide you towards crafting a compelling pitch for your business goals.
Business is always a process that requires some skills, knowledge and experience to succeed. These skills always come in form of strategies towards some set goals the business.
Elevator pitch always form part of these skillful strategies towards achieving business goals.
Whether you have started your dream business or still planning to set it up, elevator pitch is one of the vital things that you need for your business success.
What Is An Elevator Pitch?
Before we dive into discussing the elevator pitch examples, let’s first of all look at meaning of elevator pitch.
An elevator pitch is usually a very short and persuasive speech used to describe what a business, company or organization does, and it’s always meant to arouse the interest of potential customers or investors.
A good elevator pitch should be very interesting, persuasive, memorable, and should not be longer than 20 or 30 seconds. So, the elevator pitch examples we are going to discuss here would really help you to understand better what a good elevator pitch should look like.
Differences Between Elevator Pitch, Elevator Speech, and Pitch Deck
Elevator Pitch
As explained already, elevator pitch is usually a short speech of 20 – 30 seconds, used to describe what a company does and to convince potential customers or investors.
In some cases, the duration required for an elevator pitch may be longer than the said 20/30 seconds; sometimes it may be up to 4 minutes, but all depends on the conditions available.
Both elevator pitch and elevator speech may be very similar, but there is still a unique difference that exists between them.
An elevator pitch is usually in form of speech delivered to investors in a very formal setting, and can be done most times with the help of presentation slides.
Elevator Speech
An elevator speech can be less formal than elevator pitch, in the sense that elevator speech can be in a mere verbal form, emails or even as a stand alone deck that investors can view at their own convenient time.
Sometimes an elevator speech could arise in a social setting, or during a very short introductory meeting of limited time, where you just need to make a short description of what you do.
It could be that you were just coming from the airport, and you met your old time friend. At this point, there may not really be enough time to discuss deeply about your business; all you need here is just an elevator speech, to introduce your business to your friend who might be your potential customer or investor.
Pitch Deck
On the other hand, a pitch deck is always a 10 – 15 presentation slides carefully prepared to introduce your business to potential customers or investors.
It is a very brief visual presentation that you can create using your power point, or other related softwares; and this is always presented during an offline or online meeting with potential customers, investors or even the business team.
Uses Of An Elevator Pitch
Before we talk about the elevator pitch examples, let us first of all know when and where an elevator pitch is needed.
Being a very vital skillful strategy for your business goals, elevator pitch may be required in many different occasions.
Mostly, elevator pitch is always needed by investors whenever entrepreneurs are seeking for funding to start up or to expand their business.
But there are still several other occasions that elevator pitch may be important:
- Elevator pitch can be used to tell people what you do for a living.
- It can be used to introduce your business or company to your potential customers or investors.
- It can be used to persuade people about your business, organization, or company; explaining what makes your business unique from others.
- It can be used to stare people’s interests in a project, idea, products, or service.
- You can use elevator pitch in your organization to sell your new idea to your CEO.
- You can use elevator pitch to tell people the new changes you have introduced in your business, company, organization.
- Sometimes an elevator pitch can be used to secure a job; that is in form of job interview.
Preparing Your Elevator Pitch
Here we shall be giving out some guides and the elevator pitch examples that would help you in crafting a compelling elevator pitch for your business or any other use.
One important thing you should always put in your mind while crafting your elevator pitch is that it should be as short as possible, usually 20 – 30 seconds.
This is why you need to go straight to the point, and say what your investors or customers really need to hear.
Entrepreneur stated that an elevator pitching must Stimulate interest, transition that interest, and share a vision.
So, while using elevator pitch to describe your business in order to capture the interest of your potential investors or customers, the first thing you should talk about is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
Unique refers to those things that make your business or company unique; that is, what your company really does well.
While selling could refer to what the customers actually want.
So, Unique Selling Proposition could be seen as what makes your business, company, organization, products, or service better than others; that is what makes you stand out from your competitors.
Example; Unique Selling Proposition is stated in the sentence below:
“We use a novel approach because unlike most other Banks, we occasionally call our customers to know if they are having any challenge banking with us. Though this approach may really be hectic, but 95% of our customers are always happy to see their bank call them on phone.”
Components Of An Effective Elevator Pitch
Though there may really be different occasions that may demand different formats of elevator pitch, but generally, an effective elevator pitch should contain the following:
- Who you are
- What You do
- Your ideal clients
- How you are different from others in your field?
- What happens next
- An attention getting hook
The Elevator Pitch Examples (Step-by-step Guides)
One thing you should put in your mind is that the format of your elevator pitch actually depends on what purpose you want to use it for.
So the format of the elevator pitch examples used here are based on the condition available.
That was why I outlined the possible uses of elevator pitch, earlier in this post.
Elevator Pitch For Potential Customers
An elevator pitch meant to just tell potential customers about your business or company may not really be the same with the one you want to use to secure funding for your business start up or expansion.
So the elevator pitch examples meant for potential customers may not really be the same with the elevator pitch examples meant for Job interviews.
Let’s say you met someone on a public transport and they asked you about what you do; this form of elevator pitch should also be very short and may not really be required to be too formal or to follow a certain format.
- Tell Them Whom You Are
You don’t really need to jump and start rambling into the whole issue without introducing yourself first.
You have to tell whom you are and the role you play in the business; are you a staff in the company or the CEO?
Example: “I am a sales rep at sunex panels.”
- Say What Your Company Does
Here, you should state briefly the mission of your business or company, by telling your potential customers the products or services your business renders.
Example: “We help both homes and companies install quality solar system for better power supply.”
- State Your Unique Selling Proposition
Here you should try to make the whole thing more interesting and compelling by stating why your company is better than other competitors out there.
Example: “with technological experts partnering with us from other countries, we always make sure that we supply quality solar power that can satisfy our customers.”
- Grab Their Attention
At the end of the description as stated above, you may decide to stare more the attention and interest of the audience by stating some interesting facts about your business.
Example: “On average, we have been able to save our customers up to 25% on their annual electricity bills.”
Elevator Pitch For Potential Funders or Investors
As I have stated earlier, elevator pitch for mere customers may not really be the same with the one you want to use to source for funds for business star-tups or expansion.
So, the elevator pitch examples here would be focused on the format used for securing business funds.
In this type of elevator pitch, some Grant organizations like Tony Elumelu Foundation sometimes may be the ones to give you the standard or format they would want your pitch to be; so it all depends on the conditions available.
But in all, there are always some important parts/components of an elevator pitch that needs to be included while crafting an elevator pitch for potential investors.
The elevator pitch examples below would help you in crafting a compelling elevator while sourcing for your business capital or funds.
Credit: Unsplash
- About Your Business Or Business Idea
Here you need to clearly defined your business or business idea, and identify the problem you want to solve with your business.
What products or services is your business offering and how would these address your identified problems?
- Profitability Of Your Business
You would really need to prove that your business can actually generate profit if you are given the fund or capital.
Give a very short summary of your operational cost, and how you would be able to make your profit.
How many customers do you expect to have to make a specific amount of money?
- Target Audience/Customers
Here you would really need to talk about your target customers, and the estimated size of your potential customers.
If you are producing baby wears, then your target audience would possibly be the pregnant and nursing mothers. So, you need to quantify their size; how many pregnant women do you really think would patronize you?
- Business Analysis
Here you need to state the possible threats and challenges you think would possibly be facing your business or business idea.
This could be in form of competition from others, environmental challenges, political issues; and how you intend to overcome the challenges.
Don’t only talk on the negative side, try to also state the opportunities and strength that surround your business despite the challenges.
In order to carry out the business analysis, you may need to make use of: SWOT analysis and PESTEL analysis
SWOT means:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
PESTEL means:
- Political
- Economic
- Social
- Technological
- Environmental
- Legal
- Resource Requirements
Here, you are expected to describe the resources you actually need for you to be able to start up or expand your business.
It could be that you need to buy equipment, rent location, employ workers, and so on.
- Business Forecasting and Planning
To make everything clearer to the funder, you may really need to let them know the stage of your business.
Is it still in idea stage, or it has started operating?
If it is already in operation, then you would really need to tell your business success so far. How long have you being in the business, and what are your achievements so far?
Last Step: Read, Edit and Practice
Since elevator pitch can be a combination of slides and speech depending on the condition; you may actually decide to take your time to first of all write down all you would say in the pitch, before practicing it.
So, having written this wonderful piece so far, you should now go through it again, edit it thoroughly to be void of errors and still align with the specified time duration.
Then practice it very well but avoid making it sound like a memorized work.
If you really need help in crafting your elevator pitch, then feel free to drop a comment on the comment section; Or you can check out this Business Summary Template as it can also give you some clues on how to go about your elevator pitch.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to our help-desk below to get your elevator pitch from us.
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Elevator Pitch For Job Interview
As has been explained in this post, there are several occasions that may demand an elevator pitch, of which job interview is one of these occasions.
Elevator Pitch in job interviews usually come in when the job seeker wants to introduce themselves to the employer, it is usually meant to tell the employer what you can offer and why you think you are fit for that job.
This kind of elevator pitch comes in when the employer/interviewer asks the question “tell me about yourself”.
Some job seekers usually get very confused at hearing this particular question in an interview, but the question is actually demands an elevator pitch about yourself, what you can offer to the company/organizatio, and why you think you are the one among others that is qualified for that job.
Since it is called an elevator pitch, you should always make sure you stick to the time frame of an elevator pitch (20 – 30 seconds) while answering “tell me about yourself” in an interview.
Once you appear before the interviewer, they may not have much impression about you yet, they don’t know anything yet about you.
The impression they can have about you starts from the way you address this question; that is, your ability to capture their interest and convince them that you are actually the right person they had been searching.
So while presenting your elevator pitch in a job interview, here is the track that can keep you guided:
- Start with a very brief introduction about you and your profession.
- Don’t inform them directly about what you do, rather impress them by letting them know how well you can do that particular thing.
- Try to identify any relevant challenge in the organization, which you would make offer to solve.
Check samples below:
WRONG: I’m a sales manager with 10 years experience in digital marketing. I’m skilled in social media marketing, and I have good records of boosting customer relationship.
WRIGHT: I’m a senior sales manager with creative attitude to problem solving [PROFESSIONAL PERSONA].
In my current position as sales consultant at sunex fashion, my recent challenge has being to increase customer trust in online shopping and make sure that customers always get exactly the quality of what they order online [PROBLEM]. I introduced a new idea that at least one sales representative would be mounted in all the 36 states of the Country [ACTION].
We managed to increase customer trust by 65% since the selected sales rep were indigenes of the state they were mounted [RESULT].
I Know maintaining good customer relationship is one of your key priorities. I’m sure I can use my expertise to achieve great results with this initiative [Your offer].
Advantages of Elevator Pitch
The advantages of an effective elevator pitch can never be overemphasize.
Your elevator pitch has the power to make or mar your business goals, and that is why your ability to craft a compelling elevator pitch is highly important.
So below are some advantages of elevator pitch:
- Elevator Pitch makes it possible for potential investors or customers to understand all they need to know about you or your business, in a very snappy and simplified form.
- It helps to spark interest about you or your business.
- A practised elevator pitch helps to build your confidence, and helps you to always have compelling facts to say about yourself or your business at any point in time.
- It makes you to always sound professional and always create good impression whenever you are interacting with your potential customers or investors.
- A good elevator pitch can make you stand out from the crowd, especially in a job interview.
