Make Your Pitch Succinct and Brief
When I used to write the employee development blog I occasionally posted information about how to talk about yourself in a very short time. I’m referring to the “elevator speech” so many of us hear about when we first join the workforce. Some of us wondered how you could have an elevator speech if your building had just one floor . . .
Anyway, there’s no reason why a publicist shouldn’t also be nimble with his or her elevator speech. You need to tell your story, but you need to tell it quickly. This applies to the person trying to impress someone whether she’s trying to sell a service, a client’s expertise, a product, or herself. So we can all probably learn something from the job networker.
The fact is we live in a society in which people want to know what you do. Hey, even if they’re not really interested, it’s a good way to break the ice and talk about something. It’s better than the weather unless of course the weather is really interesting…
But getting back to the pitch. Sometimes when I call someone in the media, especially if it’s a “cold” call (and some people might suggest they’re all cold calls, depending on your philosophy . . .), I ask at the top of the call, “Do you have 30 seconds for me?” This tells them a couple of things. First, this lets them know, I hope, that I truly value their time. Second, it forces me to prepare a succinct and quick pitch—the best kind, right? Right.
What I like to do, however, before I make that call whenever possible is to send an email first. Why? Because 9 ? times out of ten the person on the other end of the phone says, “Can you send me an email?” and quite frankly, I always feel as if I’m going backwards when I’m asked that. I’d rather say, “I’m quickly following up on an email . . . “
I’m not saying this always works, but it seems to be the formula that has offered me the most success. What’s probably most important in the verbal pitch is that you give them something meaty, a statistic, a new discovery, something that will help that call have some meaning. We are competing with so much these days. I know there were days long ago when I thought I would never, ever, ever in a million bazillion years ignore or postpone opening an email that wasn’t classified as spam. I open everything from clients and the media, but sometimes something slips through. That’s not good. In any case, it’s just another reminder that everything I send out has to NOT turn into someone else’s wasted time
