Perfecting Your Pitch

Hey all,

I know that I continually talk about honing your message and working on your personal brand but I have learned the importance of this first hand.  When starting a business one of the most neglected areas of your company is yourself.  Especially with more complex purchases, customers are buying into you just as much as they are buying your product or service.  That's why it's important to know what you do for your company and what your company does for others.  Having already experienced some family Christmas parties this year I found myself getting a little anxious when people asked me what I do.  Those of you who are entrepreneurs will know that it might be easier to explain what you don't do but it brought up an personal hurdle I felt I needed to jump.

Tips for crafting your personal pitch:
• Write down exactly what you do in only one sentence.  Your grandmother should be able to get it.  (No offense GamGam)
• Write down what your product or service actually does.  Once again, simplicity is key here.
• Think of someone asking saying "Yeah,  So what?" Find the strongest argument against this "Who cares?" statement and go with it.

Together these elements ensure that your pitch is both brief and conveys the value of what you do, what your product does, and why that matters. 

My example:
I call people who run business plan competitions to find out what's not working well.  Our product eliminates excess paperwork, organizes important information, and promotes the event to participants.  It saves time and money; most people would like more of each.

This may come off as a little blunt but I think that's the point.  If it is a good personal pitch people will be genuinely interested in what you do which opens the door to get into more specific details.   On the other hand, if they don't care about what you do, I just saved you a lot of time trying to explain it. 

Cheers,

EM