Your ability to present yourself and acquire new contacts is at the core of all business networking. For this you need an “elevator pitch”. Here you will find everything you need to know about creating an efficient, personal elevator pitch that really gives you results.

1. What is an elevator pitch?

The expression is derived from making contact very quickly when you meet an interesting person in an elevator. But an elevator pitch should be used in all circumstances where you get the question “What are you doing”. A good elevator pitch should present the advantages of your offering, and open up to further conversation and contact. That is all!

2. What should an elevator pitch contain?

To work well, an elevator pitch should answer three questions:
1. What do you do? Don’t focus on the products/services that you sell, but on how your customers use what you sell.
2. Whom do you do it for? What types of customers are you aiming at?
3. What benefits does it give your customers? How are your products/services helping your customers to earn money, save time, reduce stress, increase productivity etc?

3. What an elevator pitch is NOT

It should not be a mechanical sales pitch, but a time efficient way for you to start a conversation with the other person that can lead to something of mutual value.
You should NOT present everything you can do or sell! You should NOT try to make the other person buy something from you!
You should NOT ask if they use the kind of products that you sell! You should NOT ask whom they are buying from!
Key message here: An elevator pitch is not foremost about you; it is about how you add value to other people’s business.

4. What is the goal of an elevator pitch?

The goal is to stop the other person from saying: ”We don’t need that”, or “We already have people for that”, or “We don’t do that”. Instead, you want the other person to say: “Oh, how do you do that?”, or “That sounds interesting!”.

Then you have a golden opportunity to make the other person talk more about himself/herself, and then listen to your description of how you can be of help.

5. How long should an elevator pitch be?

The shorter, the better! Many people believe that it should be 30-60 seconds. That is too long; it sounds mechanical and quickly bores people. An elevator pitch should be under 10 seconds!The reason is that you want the other person to talk as much as possible, so that you understand his/her interests and needs. Tip: If you talk mostly about yourself you will be perceived as a bore, but if you encourage the other to talk about himself, he will think you are a brilliant conversationalist! That goes for everybody at all occasions.

6. When should you use your elevator pitch?

An elevator pitch is very useful in many more circumstances than you think. It reinforces your image and makes it easier for people to understand you and your business. 1. At all times when you are presenting yourself to others.

2. On you business card. Surprisingly many business cards do not have any information about the value that the person is adding to customers, or even what business sector he/she is working in! 3. On your web site.

4. When you introduce yourself on the telephone to people you want to connect with. 5. When you leave a message on a potential contact’s answering service. 6. On your letterheads and printed brochures etc 7. In your email signature.

7. After your pitch

When you have managed to get a persons attention with your elevator pitch, you want to extract more information about the other person’s interests and needs. Then you can discover together what you can offer that the other needs. Describe in more detail how you create value for your customers, and refer to a happy customer in the same type of business as the other person. Depending on the circumstances, you can either continue the discussion directly, or agree on a time for a meeting or lunch.

If you are in a hurry, e.g. in an elevator, just ask: “It would be interesting to have lunch together and get to know more about your business. Can I have your business card so that I can call you and set up a suitable time?”

Your goal is to exchange business cards and get permission to call.

Tip: Immediately make a note on the card about what was interesting and when and where you met the person. Another way, if you cannot write on the card, is to fold the upper left corner = “Hot prospect”, or the upper right corner = “Indirect contact”, or the lower right corner = “No contact”.

Happy pitching!

(See also my checklist for business mingling)

1. Business cards

Bring a stack of business cards and a pen. Far too many people attend events without their business cards! Keep the cards within easy reach. Make sure your business card tells your story, ideally put your picture on it, you want to be remembered.

2. Expectations

Realize that networking is long-term, don’t expect immediate results. You will get the most out of it if you offer your help, your experiences and your contacts without demanding anything back, “Give to Gain”. It is about relations and not about transactions, i.e. you should plant seeds and not be on a hunt!

3. The starting phase

Start directly by approaching the person closest to you, no matter how he or she looks, don’t hesitate! But respect the other person by not standing too close, many people are intimidated by that. Tip: Avoid those that you already know, tell them that you will talk to them later. You are there to make new contacts!

4. The introductory phase

Don’t start by telling all about what you can do, it is not your goal here, (and nobody really cares either). Instead you want to find out as much as possible about the other person, what he or she does, what are the interests etc, and you want to steer the conversation by asking questions.

So start instead by showing your interest in the other person. For example: “Hello, what did you think of the panel discussion?”, or ”Hello, how do you feel about this event?” (Do not ask a question that can be answered with just yes or no!) Listen to the other person, show your full attention, then he or she will soon also be interested in you and ask what you do, which is your goal.

5. Your elevator pitch

As soon as you are asked ”what do you do”, you use your elevator pitch. It should be brief, under 10 seconds, and answer three questions: 1. What do you do? 2. Whom do you do it for? 3. What benefits does it give your customers? (See also my elevator pitch checklist.)

6. The decision phase

When the other person has showed you interest and you have acquired some information, it is time to decide if this is a contact that you want to move further with or not.

7. The comprehensive phase

If you want to proceed, say ”It would be interesting to have lunch with you and get to know more about your business. Can I have your business card to call you and set up a suitable time?” Your goal is to exchange cards and get permission to call. Tip: Immediately make a note on the card about what was interesting and when and where you met the person. Another way, if you cannot write on the card, is to fold the upper left corner = “Hot prospect”, or the upper right corner = “Indirect contact”, or the lower right corner = “No contact”.

8. Termination

If you do not want to proceed with this person, just say ”OK, it was nice to meet you. Here is my card, can I have yours?” Exchange cards and then move to another person in the room.

9. Indirect contacts

Every person knows hundreds of people. The person that you are talking to is perhaps not directly interesting to you, but might have other good contacts. Therefore you should exchange business cards with everybody that you meet, and ask if they know somebody that might be interested in you and your business.

10. Time allocation

Never spend more than 3-4 minutes per person. Even if it is a very interesting contact, you can miss other even more interesting people if you linger with the same person too long. This is a very common mistake! Remember, your goal is to set up a later meeting with your key.

11. The follow up phase

Save and catalogue all the business cards. For those that you want to see again, send within two days some information about you and your business along with a suggested meeting time. You can also send a “nice to meet you”-mail to the other contacts, where you include your elevator pitch and a link to your home page. Don’t sell anything, just ask if there is any way that you can be of help.

We had 150 seats available and since we were met with lots of enthusiasm when we announced the event, we were worried about having to turn away many. So we clearly wrote in all invitation posts and emails that you had to apply for a seat and we would send out confirmations on the Friday before the event on Sunday, June 13.

Shelby Bonnie speaking. What you don’t see here are the empty seat rows in the back…

We had calculated with 10% no-shows, so we sent out confirmation emails to 165 people on the schedule.
Here is what happened:

During the weekend, we received 12 emails or twitter messages with cancellations, so we still had 153 reservations.

We also received 9 new requests to get a seat, even though the registration was closed. I turned away these people, since I was afraid that we would be over our capacity of 150.

At the event on Sunday evening, only 112 of the 153 confirmed people showed up.
So we had a no-show rate of 27%!
Another 6 people showed up at the door and said that they had heard about the event and wanted to attend.

We were a bit sorry for this since we had turned away people that wanted to come. But there was still great energy in the room and the event was a big sucess. And the local police was happy since we gave them our remaining food plates…

So what did we learn?
My conclusion: People don’t read instructions so we should have sent our remindersearlier and in more ways. We got explanations like these:
“Since I did not hear from you a week before the event I made other plans” (We said in the sign-up form that confirmation emails would be sent out on the Friday)
“I thought the registration started at 19.00″ (we said 18.00 in the confirmation email and on the web site)
“I could not find the venue” (we had very clear information in the confirmation email and on the web site)

People forget about their plans:
“I completely forgot about the event.”
“I thought it was next Sunday”

My guess is that this is because we now live in an information overflow society with a lot of buzz in many channels. There are many smart tools to handle this with online calendars and reminders etc, but most people don’t use these, there is too much choice. We rely more on being buzzed and reminded all the time so we can re-negotiate continuously. The main problem is that there is no single way of communcation that works for all. We all need to take this into consideration when we communicate.

What did we do wrong?

In hindsight, I think we should have:

1. Sent out the confirmation emails at least 5 days ahead
2. Sent out another confirmation email the day before or on the morning of the event day
3. Sent out an SMS text message on the morning of the event day (surprisingly many people said that they did not access their email during the weekend)
4. Overbooked with 20%

What do you think? Please share your experiences.
Some people told us that we should charge a SEK400 fee for no-shows, like they do at other seminars. But this is a non-profit event, so I am not sure that would be OK, besides, does that really work?

Evernote, a very smart, simple and free online tool for powerful management of notes and clips.

Also check this video, it is the founder of Evernote doing a 52-second pitch. Run the video to the end (52 seconds) and you will see a smart “overlay menu” with other related videos. A beautiful and intuitive interface!

This is a good example that I use when evangelising companies on smart tools that increase the usefulness of online video.

Basecamp is a terrific online project  collaboration tool that is very inexpensive and easy to use. It is developed by the company 37Signals, they are developing a set of online apps that are all easy to use. Also read their book Getting Real!´

Doodle is another smart little tool for booking meetings with several participants, and not having to mail around different dates and times until you settle on a time that suits everyone. It is free, simple to use and requires no registration or login!

Beautiful Iceland

We are used to tiny, fuzzy and jerky internet videos, due to technical limitations. But the technology is developing fast and new standards are now appearing that will make our video experiences richer on the internet.

So sit back, put on your best headphones and rest your eyes on this clip from Iceland, a music video with Sigur Ros, one of my favourite bands (very cool late-night music). Double-click the video to go fullscreen.

This video is compressed to use only 500 kbit/s using a new standard called H.264 (why do the engineers always come up with these awkward names?). It means that you can see this video on any computer even with a low-end broadband connection. The guy that encoded this video has tweaked it to its limits, but soon we will see this kind of quality everywhere. Compare it with this version of the same video, running at 1.3 Mbit/s, still possible to run on most broadband connections.
(Thanks Peter at Disruptive for the tip about the blog Flashcomguru.)

Another exciting technology that enables full-screen video at excellent quality comes from Move Networks. It uses dynamic bandwidth, meaning that it runs on any connection speed, the higher you have the better the quality gets. The national Swedish television SVT are the first to use this in Sweden, check it out by watching an episode of their drama series Andra Avenyn (click on “Se Andra Avenyn i högupplöst Play”).
It looks very good and also illustrates that picture quality is one thing and movie experience quality is something entirely different…

So now internet videos can be played in all sizes. From tiny thumbnails to full screen, almost HD-quality with superior stereo audio as well. This opens up for even more new ways of using video for communication, education, inspiration and information, also for corporate use.

KIVA

I am engaged in venture capital in Sweden, both as investor and as business coach. But I have also invested in 5 aspiring entrepreneurs in third world countries through KIVA, an internet based micro-lending organization that since the start in 2005 has financed some 30 000 entrepreneurs by small ($25 and up) loans from more than 130 000 people like me from all over the world.

KIVA is an example of something that could not be done without internet and the support from online payment service PayPal, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace and other partners. The web site is a school example of building an engaged community with lots of smart tools for networking between the lender and the entrepreneurs and also between lenders.

See how it works in this New York Times video story, where a reporter goes to Kabul in Afganistan to check up on his investment in a local bakery.
Exercise: first read this blog text and about KIVA on their web site.
Then watch this short video.
Compare the two experiences!
My point: video is a very powerful medium for explaining things and creating feelings for people and causes.

Also, listen to this excellent interview with the KIVA co-founder Jessica Jackley Flannery, from the Phorecast podcast.

And, if you want the entrepreneur’s look at this, check out Guy Kawasaki’s blog post “The six lessons of KIVA” (Guy is the father of the term “evangelism” for marketing and brand building).

KIVA is enabling thousands of people to improve their lives by doing everything right:

1. Creating a great user experience by connecting people globally on their site.
2. Keeping the lenders updated about the progress of each individual that they have lent money to.
3. Having a clear, easy-to-understand business model (a voluntary $2.50 or 10% from the lender for every loan).
4. Using evangelism to recruit lenders, not spending a dollar on marketing.
5. Inviting big corporate sponsors to help out with their services to create win-win.

They made the smart decision to post all of those talks online, and they do it in a very professional way. Watch some of them and then contemplate: Would you want to attend a TED conference in the future? Or would you rather just watch the videos? Well, millions have already watched the videos and TED is sold out every year a long time ahead.

For example, they have a new rating system for the videos: Most jawdropping, most persuasive, most inspiring, most courageous, most fascinating, most ingenious, most beautiful and funniest.

The famous talk by the Swedish researcher Hans Rosling talk “New insights on poverty and life around the world “is in the “Most jawdropping” category, you will understand why!
It is interesting to note that Hans Rosling held his first talk on TED in 2006 and ever since this talk was posted online he has received speaking requests from all over the world.

See also the TED video introduction:

Also check out the TED blog, highly recommended!

For example, I make notes about things to buy when I am in the city. Then I can access these notes on my mobile when I am shopping. Very convenient.

RTM is free to use and comes in many different languages, including Swedish!

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

There is also a very handy plug-in for RTM in Gmail

For me, web apps have quickly become a standard tool for most of my work the last two years, and I strongly believe that this is only the beginning.

After having used Google Docs, (I started with Writely long before they were acquired by Google), Remember the Milk (superior to-do list manager), Netvibes, and now lately Stixy (promising Swedish start-up, bulletin board online) I can no longer imagine going back to using local apps and local files.
Why?
- No more application updates
- No viruses in the files
- No backup problems
- No shuffling files with USB sticks
- No wondering “Is this the latest version of this file, or has my colleague changed anything?
- No more agony about having accidentally erased an important part of a document

and, most important:
- totally awesome for group work since several users can edit a document simultaneously
- easy to add or remove users with access to my documents

So I am surprised that not more people have realized this and started to use for example Google Docs. Today the also added presentations, so now you can do word processing, spreadsheets and slide presentations in the same web app, and export the files to Word, Excel or PowerPoint if you need.

But my hope is that The Future of Web Apps will be about the next step, there are many big opportunities in this area!

Business Week har publicerat en intressant artikel om detta, “The Power of Us” där man tar upp intressanta exempel på hur både nya och gamla företag utnyttjar dubbelriktad dialog via Internet till att skapa mervärde för kunderna och få in utvecklingsidéer mm.

Några citat ur artikeln:

“For the first time in human history, mass cooperation across time and space is suddenly economical.”

“We are seeing the emergence of an economy of the people, by the people, for the people.”

“If companies can open themselves up to contributions from enthusiastic customers and partners, that should help them create products and services faster, with fewer duds — and at far lower cost, with far less risk.”

Det sista citatet sammanfattar det jag predikar; att man med fördel kan och bör involvera kunderna i utvecklingsarbetet om man har smarta system som gör det enkelt för alla och som ger lämpliga incitatment. Exempel på effektiva verktyg för detta är t ex bloggar och förslagsforum på webben, jag är involverad i utvecklingen av ett nytt system som låter kunder helt enkelt ringa in synpunkter och automatiskt få återkoppling och belöning.

I artikeln nämns också att en grupp av människor är under rätt omständigheter ofta smartare än den smartaste gruppmedlemmen. Detta förklaras på ett bra sätt i boken “The Wisdom of Crowds” av James Surowiecki. Rekommenderad läsning som kan leda till nya bättre sätt att organisera företag.