If you are able to introduce yourself to someone in a compelling way, it can help set you up for a successful professional conversation, whether it’s at a networking event, with a colleague or at the beginning of an interview. One tool you can use to make introductions simple and effective is the elevator pitch. In this article, we share several elevator pitch examples along with tips to help ideate, craft and deliver your personal message.
A personal elevator pitch is a quick summary of yourself or the kind of service(s) you can provide to others. It’s named for the amount of time it should take to deliver it—the duration of a short elevator ride (roughly 30 to 60 seconds or 75 words). Elevator pitches are sometimes thought to be specific to an idea,a product, or a service, but you can also use it to sell yourself as a professional.
So, if you want to leave a good, engaging and lasting impression with someone you’ve just met, you need to understand how humans make decisions on the “hoof” and how to make these brain shortcuts work to your advantage.
The first rule of an elevator pitch is that it is usually no longer than 80-90 words. Why do you think that this is? Well, back to behavioural economics, humans are bombarded with information, from all directions, all of the time, particularly today, with the intrusive presence of apps screaming for attention from our mobile phones. You are competing for attention with everything else, so to be most effective, the information needs to be presented in a concise manner.
This principle of brevity has been successfully applied since 2006, when Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams invented Twitter, and decades later, it's still successful, right? A tweet in 2021, contains 280 characters, which is roughly 50-55 words depending on the word length. Your elevator speech should roughly be about twice the size of the average tweet.
So, keep your pitch short, simple, and to the point so that your audience finds it easy to remember and hard to forget.
State the problem you solve. (Start with “You Know How”)
State your solution (I do this to solve it)
State examples (Finish with proof)