I was reading Ditch! Dare! Do! (a great book on personal branding by two friends and saw an interesting line.
The story was about someone who was communicating their brand using what has been historically been called an elevator pitch.
You know, the one that you should spend no more or no less than 30 seconds on? (Story: I was at a networking meeting where they had you do your 30 second pitch and if you went over 30 seconds they would annoyingly ring a gong. It was horrible!)
In the book they gave a great example of someone answering the question “what do you do” with a 28 word response.
28 words… intriguing!
Maybe instead of shooting for 30 seconds, which for some people can sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher blabbing on, let’s talk about getting it down to something shorter… 28 or 30 words!
This is hard stuff, but if you can brand yourself well CONCISELY you can have more power in the conversation.
I’m looking forward to reading William and Deb’s book myself, Jason.
Here’s a recent article that suggests new ways to think about the elevator pitch–gave me new ideas for making them more meaningful/less perfunctory:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2013/03/26/six-simple-and-irresistible-alternatives-to-the-elevator-pitch
Thanks for sharing that link Robert. I saw it in a Discussion on my LinkedIn Group.
In general I like the idea of the article but I think it’s too “here are six ways that are the best”… I’d take it with a grain of salt to help me really come up with a good/effective pitch.
Ugh… just the word “pitch” seems to carry the wrong meaning, doesn’t it?