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Face it, no one wants to sit through a presentation that gives them information overload. Overloading your potential client with too much information leads to LESS understanding about what you do!
Your presentation should be laser-specific and focus on the VALUE that you add to a client’s business. This is where an elevator presentation comes in handy. An elevator pitch needs to tell people who you are and what you do in simple terms that also arouses curiosity.
Here are seven tips to help you create an effective presentation.
- Don’t do an unsolicited pitch: An unsolicited pitch is basically face to face cold calling. Many people go to various events and at the drop of a hat, start pitching to anyone and everyone who might lend them a ear. Stop doing this. Find out more about what they are doing and get an appointment to meet them. Pitch in the appropriate environment.
- Make it tight: It needs to be short. Your pitch should be more like a work of art instead of a science project. It should be succinct and expressive. It’s something you must practice carefully to be able to present yourself cohesively and professionally. You also need it to be natural. You want to rehearse but not sound rehearsed. So you want to avoid sounding staged and canned.
- K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Silly.): Don’t try to explain everything in the short time that you have. Focus only on those aspects that will be of relevance to your audience and interest them. By keeping your pitch simple, you have more of a chance to catch your listeners attention and engage them with your creativity and create interest in your product or service.
- Don’t use jargon: If at any point someone has to say, “What does that mean?” You have officially lost them.
- Share your USP: Create a crafty USP instead of saying a bland general statement. A crafty USP is powerful & informative. For instance, if you are a digital marketer, don’t just introduce yourself as “Hi – I’m Rahul, into digital marketing.” Make it catchy and something that can catch people’s attention.
- What will be the benefits for the client: Consider starting out with precisely how the client will benefit by using your services. Now this is an important one. It could be something as simple as, “I help people reach their sales by 33%, improving their closing ratio to 80%. Or double the number of clients they take on per month.” It doesn’t matter what the client does because if you talk to any business person, they are going to say, “Wait a minute, how do you do that?” Focus on the after of the product or service that you provide.
- Pass the eyebrow test: An eyebrow test is where after you do your presentation, you watch the listeners eyebrows. If what you say in your presentation causes the listener’s eyebrows to go up, you’ve got them. They’re curious. By doing this, you leave the listener wanting more and that precisely what you want the elevator pitch to do. On the other hand, if the listeners eyebrows scrunch down, you’ve confused them.
