Turning an elevator pitch into a passion pitch

I started participating in a new Business Development group. You know one of those where you sit around a table and everyone makes their elevator pitch. It sounds much like this:  Hi, my name is blah blah and I’m a (pipe in the sound of the parents or teachers in Charlie Brown/Peanuts cartoons). By the time we got to the 4th person, the room was as glazed over as the donuts being served.

Ironically, after this meeting I had the opportunity to meet with a friend who was struggling to express what he does in a way that keeps people he meets from glazing over. He expressed frustration from knowing that his elevator pitch just did not work. He’d been playing around with the language and tried some new approaches for a few months but it still wasn’t clicking. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I just can’t figure out how to make it easy for people to understand what I do and to think of me when they, or a friend, could use my services.”

We talked for a while. We all know it is never easy to work on yourself. I talked to him about tapping into his passion – what is it YOU love about what YOU do. He said simply, “I figure out where communication and people are not connecting and thus preventing companies from reaching their maximum productivity… you know getting it all to hum in a beautiful way”. You see he is a “leadership development consultant.” And while we all “know” what that means, we really don’t.  So we came up with this: Most of my clients’ employees function at 60% productivity. I conduct an assessment to unearth what is keeping them from operating at 80-90% of their capacity. Then I help implement that change. All at about 1-2% of total cost of payroll.”  Now he is selling what he LOVES to do and people connect with passion.

Want help with a passion pitch or need to get your team up to 80% of their capacity?  Call us, we’ll share our secrets.