By Jerry Smith
Your Elevator Speech -- your first and best opportunity to grab the attention of clients and prospects.
Everyone has one! When you are a small business owner you will be asked about your business and what you do. Unless you are not going to say anything, you will give an answer and that, like it or not, is your elevator speech. It will create an impression, and you want that to be attention grabbing for the right reason, which brings us to the use of humor when introducing yourself and your business.
Humor can make a message more attractive, but there is a time and a place. “Being funny” is a skill that not everyone possesses to the same extent. It can seem as though an elevator speech is an ideal place for humorous delivery, but there are several reasons to treat this thought with great care:
1. Time -- there is a reason the elevator speech is sometimes called a 30 second introduction. You don’t have long. There isn’t time to tell a long story or anecdote. You will lose your listener.
2. Humor is very personal. Something you find incredibly funny will leave others cold. If you are talking to an ideal prospect, and they don’t find your message amusing, they are likely to be confused or worse…..
3. The risk of giving offense -- an elevator speech that upsets someone certainly grabs attention, but not in a good way! You can’t assume that a clever play on words that is perfectly innocent from your perspective, is equally inoffensive to everyone. It is a risk you don’t need to take
4. Pressure -- coming up with a great elevator speech takes focussed effort and practice. Looking for an amusing spin on that puts a lot of pressure on you that you don’t need.
5. Irrelevance -- it is easy to come up with an amusing elevator speech that doesn’t actually help your prospect understand that they might want to learn more about you. They MAY remember your speech, but not actually what you do.
So, there are many reasons to be cautious with your elevator speech when it comes to humor. It CAN be effective, but there biggest risk is assuming that amusing is always good -- sometimes being clever actually causes confusion, and a confused mind goes away, rather than engaging with you.
The good news is that humor is not essential. You will get great results when you develop an elevator speech that addresses the issues and challenges faced by your target market. They will engage with that and want to find out more about you -- you have grabbed their attention even if you didn’t leave them laughing!
Jerry Smith is the co-founder of Marketing Action Club, and the Get More Great Clients online marketing program. Focused on helping small business owners and independent professionals who are looking to grow their business but struggle to attract quality clients consistently.
Visit http://www.30secondelevatorspeech.com for a step by step “how-to” guide to developing your attention grabbing 30 second introduction.
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You should also consider attending your local networking events such as the Chamber of Commerce meetings and all local investor meetings in order to hand the card and network with potential clients. The more you out there, the better chance you have to secure some large, long-term customers!
Good point although my experience is that many people, business owners included go to networking events without a well developed reply to the question: “So, what do you do?”
I am not suggesting you have a learned response to that so you always sound 100% the same, but having an elevator speech is really important so you can grab someone’s attention right away. Networking and handing out cards is greatly facilitated by having a compelling, succinct message and reply to the above question.