Four things to put in your elevator pitch

By now you’ve heard the term “elevator pitch” a million times.  It means compellingly telling your story and why it matters in the time it takes an elevator to travel to its destination.  The reason this is such a worthwhile exercise is that it makes you home in on why someone should care about your cause, and it forces you to make that case succinctly.  It’s very hard to do.  But once you get it down, it’s handy for so many things: chatting with funders, giving punchy speeches, writing pithy copy.

The speech coach Nick Morgan has published a 99-cent essay on crafting an elevator speech, and it has some good pointers for getting to the point. (I liked the essay and recommend his blog.)

1. Grab the attention of the SPECIFIC audience by starting with the word YOU.  Make it about the people listening.  Why should they care?

2. Identify a need, problem or challenge they have.  This gets to that point I’m always making - show how your cause relates to their values.

3. Weave in emotion.

4. Explain how you solve that need or problem.

It’s a good outline for much of nonprofit marketing.

Think about how often we do the OPPOSITE of this list!  We start with I, as in “I’m Katya, and I am…”  We talk about what we do, not what we do to address a problem the audience has.  Or we let a committee attack our pitch - or mission statement.

Here’s my favorite video on how things go awry.

What’s your pitch?  Does it follow this list?  Do you also take into account Dan’s advice - are you concrete and do you get at the why?

Put yours in the comments here.  I’ll give the author of the best one - or my favorite before and after - a copy of my book.

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