Posted on: 13 December, 2001
Author: Dave Balch
The other day I was in a pizza place and struck up ... with the owner. He ... that he had a home business ... to that ... and it was doing very ... Tell me about The other day I was in a pizza place and struck up aconversation with the owner. He mentioned that he had a home business inaddition to that restaurant and it was doing very well."Great! Tell me about it!"He proceeded, for the next five minutes, to explain. It was onthe Internet. Doctors and lawyers are doing this as a sidebusiness and are doing very, very well. He said "It's a sort ofmall on the Internet, you should check it out." He gave me theweb address and then he had to tend to a customer.I had no idea what he did.Can you explain your business clearly to a complete stranger in20 seconds or less? Can you do it in such a way that, if theyare in a position to use your product or service they will wantto know more? If not, you have some work to do!Whenever and wherever you go you will meet potential customers,and you may not have much time to talk to them. If you cannotclearly explain your business in a very short time, you couldlose an opportunity to interest someone in what you do; someonethat would be a good prospect if they knew.This is commonly referred-to as an "elevator speech". Why?Because if you got on an elevator with someone and, on the wayup, they asked, "What do you do?" you would only have a fewseconds to tell them before one of you reached your floor.You cannot possibly tell your entire business story in such ashort time, but that is not the objective. The objective is tobreak it down to its most essential elements, and get them to askfor more.Several years ago I went to a high school reunion (never mindwhich one!) and saw a friend that I hadn't seen since graduation.I asked him what he did for a living. He said "I fix bones!"(It was pretty noisy and I thought he said, "I fix phones", butthat's another story.) That grabbed my interest, so I asked himto tell me exactly what that meant and he explained that he wasan orthopedic surgeon, he had his own practice, was chief oforthopedic surgery at a major local hospital, and that hespecialized in foot disorders. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom! Hegrabbed me with the "elevator speech" (in this case, just threewords) and then, once he had my interest, took more time to tellme the details. Perfect!Work on your elevator speech. Practice it out loud when you arealone; it will get better the more times you say it. Then, whenthose big potential customers come along, you'll be ready to hook'em and reel 'em in!What's my elevator speech? I thought you'd never ask..."I help people make more money and have more fun with their smallor home based businesses." Article Tags: Elevator Speech Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com