An Elevator Speech - an Indispensable Tool for Self Promotion
Spadework for Your Elevator Speech
An elevator speech is an indispensable tool for promoting your
work. What is an elevator speech? It is a sentence or two that
you can deliver in the space of an elevator ride that expresses
the essence of your unique offer.
Believe it or not, your elevator speech can be a lovely specimen
from the garden that is your practice or business, a unique and
authentic expression of the offer that you are and thus an
invaluable tool of self promotion. This is the first step in
creating such a speech.
Take five minutes and invite into your awareness those aspects
of your work that amaze and delight you. Jot down words and
short phrases as they occur to you. Don't worry about making
sense or connections. You are gathering raw material here and,
believe it or not, the less sense you make at this stage, the
more authentically you will be able to articulate your passion
and purpose later.
Choose two words that you find especially evocative. Trust
yourself and go with your instincts here. There are no wrong
choices. Look up each word in a dictionary and a thesaurus,
faithfully copying the definitions (all of them, even those that
seem not to apply) and the synonyms. To go deeper, look up the
roots of your words in an etymological dictionary.
Reflect upon these words, their meanings and associations, and
write down what you notice. Was there a surprise in what you
found? An "Aha!"? A dissonance? A resonance?
Keep your notes in your notebook where you can draw on them
whenever you need to tell someone about your work.
Sound Track for Your Elevator Speech
Review your notes from the Spadework for Your Elevator Speech.
What theme song would you like to have playing in the background
when you use an elevator speech? Get a copy of this song and
play it often while you work on your marketing.
Write an Elevator Speech
Drawing on (the work you have done thus far in the course) your
spadework, write an elevator speech, a one- or two-sentence
statement you can make in 15 seconds or less that introduces you
and your unique offer.
Your elevator speech should have the general form, "I do (nature
of service) for (ideal client) so that they can (benefit to the
client).
Here are two elevator speeches I use:
-- I help independent professionals and artists build great
businesses and have lives they love.
-- I help independent professionals market their businesses so
their work feeds their souls as well as their bank accounts.
A good elevator speech will most likely evolve over days, weeks,
or months. Start the evolutionary process by writing your first
draft today. In other words, don't wait for the perfect elevator
speech. Write an imperfect one, use it, and the perfect one will
evolve in time.
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Interested in self promotion? Learn about an effective self promotional marketing
tool - The Rule of Threes and the ways of preparing your promotional marketing materials, explore
your business values
on the path of authentic self promotion and
marketing your small business effectively and expand your
vision of your small business
marketing and self promotion practices.