Elevator pitch
The mission statement must be right for you, but you also need to know
exactly what you actually sell.
If you are asked: “so, what are you doing?” it is often quite hard to come up
with a swift and clear answer for what your company actually sells. Many
have a tendency of maundering, deepening or understating leaving the
questioner with a diffuse impression of what has been said.

Try to prepare the perfect sales talk brief enough to be told to a stranger in
an elevator. He or she might be a potential customer.

A restaurant owner and an IT expert could work out the below elevator
pitches:

• The restaurant owner
I own the city’s most entertaining Sports Café with a capacity of 150
people. It is fully equipped with state-of-the-art technology providing full
insight into all aspects of the world of sports from separate monitors at
each of the 40 tables.
We have specially trained staff to serve our menus and drinks at fair
prices. Here is my business card, it is a one-meal-free voucher for you
and a friend.

• The IT expert
We provide a service for companies enabling their existing financial
management software to handle electronic invoicing, stock control and
payments transfer. This is a requirement large companies will shortly
ask their suppliers to meet.
Furthermore, e-commerce is cutting administrative costs. Those joining
now will be ready to face the future.

Customer benefit
What benefits do the customer get from buying your product or service?
As customers have to spend money on your service or product it is
important to analyse which motives they have for doing so. If you do not
know these benefits it becomes difficult for you to develop and sell the
service or product to the customer.

Usually it is hard for an entrepreneur to envision what kind of customer
demand is satisfied by purchasing his/her service or product. The
entrepreneur would rather let the customer know about the product’s
properties. This means facts on the product / informative labelling like how
long and wide, the weight or how many MHz the computer delivers.
However, a customer only focuses on the benefits and output to be gained
from a given service or product.

Benefits group into several categories – benefits could be saving time,
money, trouble, or transportation. A benefit for the customer could also be

8
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51