Don’t dilute your opportunities by making your sales pitch too general.

I recently attended a EXPO for interactive designers sponsored by the AIGA in Denver. As a small social experiment, I went around to each of the exhibits, located the sponsor of that table and asked:

“What do you do?”

“We do everything,” said a young, hip designer from behind a folding table.

“So, you shoot film for product promotions,” I said, pointing to the large, image of a man in a compromising yoga pose on the screen behind him.

“Well no,” he said.

“So you integrated that slice of film into the overall piece,” I said.

“No,” he said.

At this point, I started giggling. The hipster boy started getting the drift of where the conversation was headed. He started smirking at me and happily answered “no” to each of my subsequent questions about what his company did.

I wish I could say that he was the only one making this lethal marketing mistake at this event, but he wasn’t. More than half the people I talked to “did everything” just like everyone else. And soon enough, “everything” to most ears actually starts to sound like “nothing.”

One of the most important and most free pieces of marketing material that you will ever have is your elevator speech. This is the two or three phrases that you use to describe what you do, what you’re good at and what you live for. A lot of this comes across in how you look and how you act, but at least give yourself a chance to send the best message you can about your talents and skills.

If my aforementioned designer guy had said “I crab walk to work” that at least would have been a more memorable answer than “we do everything.” There are a number of reasons that people either don’t have or don’t use an elevator speech and even more reasons why you should have a good one.

You’re afraid.

If you tell people specifically what you do it might not be exactly what they want to buy. But this is a good thing! If I want to pay you to write COBOL in my crawl space and you don’t love that kind of work then, you don’t want this job. And furthermore, if you do tell me what you do and it doesn’t match my exact needs, then you still have shot at learning that I have a friend or collegue that DOES need exactly what you do.

It’s not interesting enough.

The world is full of millions of people, and I can assure you that there are people, aside from your mother, that will be impressed by what you do. If you have already done your market research (and you have, right?!) then you know that there are customers out their who will need your services. You don’t need to have something radical and transformative. New technologies, for example, are interesting, but they’re hard to sell, because no one knows what they are. Don’t be afraid to offer something simple and be really good at it. If you’re still not convinced, consider the iPod. It just plays music. That’s it. Seriously.

You don’t know.

If you don’t know what you do, then you need to go back to the drawing board. You should not be at a networking event, and you certainly shouldn’t be giving a short speech in an elevator. You might not know what you do because you are just starting out, but you also might not know because the market for your services has changed so much that you’re suddenly left holding an outdated product or technology.

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What If Project LLC offers leadership and project management coaching and consulting for small and medium-sized technology companies. To learn more about how we can help you with your elevator speech, visit What If Project or contact us for a free consultation.