How to Craft Your Elevator Pitch
- Mark Volkmann
- September 22, 2014
- - Marketing
Have you ever crossed paths with a stranger or potential client, been asked about your massage practice and given a less than ideal response? If so, this happens to the best of us and there are ways around it.
Sometimes you know the ins-and-outs of your massage practice so well that it takes time to formulate your thoughts and pare your day-to-day practice down to the essentials that people want to hear about.
You can streamline the answer you give to strangers or clients inquiring about your practice by creating an elevator pitch that gives them a quick rundown of what you do, how it can help them, and the kind of value your practice offers. Here’s how…
What’s an Elevator Pitch?
Contrary to some opinion, an elevator pitch does not involve a mode of transportation and a baseball mitt. An elevator pitch, on the contrary, is a quick synopsis and rundown of what your massage practice offers.
An elevator pitch is an extremely powerful tool for generating interest in your massage practice. It shouldn’t take longer to deliver than an elevator ride – or around 30 seconds to a minute to deliver from start to finish.
Essentials of the Pitch
A worthwhile elevator pitch should be easily memorizable – since you’re going to have to deliver this pitch in-person – short and sweet, and filled with one or two interesting anecdotes. An effective pitch also needs to explain how your massage practice is different than others in your area.
Before getting into the actual logistics of creating an effective elevator pitch, it’s important to remember than an elevator pitch is not a one-trick pony.
An elevator pitch can, indeed, be used to give strangers or potential clients a rundown of your practice and services, but it can also be used to describe your practice to other professionals or acquaintances. Either way, you’re adding value by telling people about what you do in a concise and interesting way.
Now, let’s get into how to create an elevator pitch. What makes this kind of pitch compelling? How can you make it flow naturally into conversation?
Steps for the Perfect Pitch
Identifying an Underlying Goal
Make sure that your elevator pitch, for starters, fully explains the services that your massage practice offers your community and make sure to identify the purpose behind delivering the pitch in the first place.
As for an underlying goal behind most elevator pitches, you usually want to tell potential clients about what you do. That’s simple, but…
Do you also want to tell clients about upcoming promotions and newly-introduced services? Do you want to tell them about new areas or new practices that you’re planning on opening. You need to brainstorm and find out what’s important to convey in 30 seconds or so before formatting the final version of your pitch.
Start with the Bare Essentials
Just being sincere and upfront about what you do is typically the surest way of quickly finding out the value that you add to clients. Make sure that clients come away from the pitch a little wiser about the services you offer and how much your practice means to you.
Convey your enthusiasm! There’s a concept called state transference, which means essentially that whatever you feel, the client will also feel. If you’re enthusiastic about what you do, then that enthusiasm will likely rub off on the audience.
What Makes Your Practice Unique?
Really ask yourself what makes your massage practice stand out. Do some research on other practices in your community and find out some of the differences between those practices and yours.
If you offer more services, longer hours, exotic massages or even something as prosaic as complimentary refreshments, then make sure you convey that in your pitch.
An elevator pitch is about delivering value. Go into the pitch with the assumption that clients want to hear more about what makes you unique and how they can benefit from interacting with you and your practice.
Engage Your Audience
You might want to start your pitch with a question. Although this sounds paradoxical, starting with a question is actually a great way to stimulate conversation. Asking someone who’s curious about what you do the last time they had a massage is a way to generate interest and offer value.
Practice Makes Perfect (and Permanent)
It may take a few warmup pitches and fine-tunings to come up with an elevator pitch that you’re truly satisfied with and that you can deliver naturally and with confidence.
Make sure that you’re conveying the essentials of the services your practice offers, how your practice is unique, and also make sure to keep the pitch under a minute to convey maximum value and keep the audience’s attention.
- Author: Mark Volkmann
- Published: September 22, 2014
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