Guy Kawasaki tells us in his bestselling entrepreneurial guide The Art of the Start (one of my "Entrepreneurial Top 5 Must Reads for 2005"), that Rene Descartes' principle "I think, therefore I am", in the case of Entrepreneurs, should really be "I pitch, therefore I am". He goes on to tell the old investor joke "How do you know when an entrepreneur is pitching? His lips are moving."
For Entrepreneurs, a good pitch is needed no matter the task at hand. Want to raise capital? — You need to pitch your plan. Want to attract top notch employees? — You need to pitch your vision. Want to attract strategic partners? — You need to pitch the benefits of working with you. Want to increase sales? — You need to pitch your solution. The ability to pitch, i.e., to get your key message across in a meaningful, compelling, and concise manner, is one of the Entrepreneur's most necessary skill sets. It is remarkable then, that it is also one of the skills most often missing.
W. Daniel Mothersill, President of the National Angel Organization, Pitch Coach for the Toronto Venture Group, Chair of the Ciris Group of Companies, and one of the key voices at Ernst & Young's cross country Entrepreneurial Bootcamp program, puts it this way:
"Most pitches are about as exciting as a bowl of cold oatmeal, but not as good for the digestion. For the most part, these quick pitches can best be categorized as trite, trivial, and tepid. Too often they devolve into warmed-over motherhood statements, weighted down by techno-speak and spiced with jargon."
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In meeting with over 2,000 entrepreneurs at over 70-plus bootcamps, Mothersill states that pitching is where most of the attendees come up short.
"They make these disembodied statements sort of describing what their company does, but they almost never talk about the market pain it solves. They miss the whole point," said Mothersill.
"No pain, no gain must be the mantra for anyone creating an elevator pitch. In a few short sentences, you need to tie in your audience's needs, wants, and desires directly to your company's offerings. I've helped a couple of thousand companies to do this. It can take as much as a day to develop, but yields dividends for a lifetime."
So how do you create a powerful elevator pitch? Well, first you need to understand exactly what an "Elevator Pitch" is and where it comes from.
Where does the term Elevator Pitch come from?
I first heard the term Elevator Pitch when I worked in New York during the dot.com boom. I'm sure it dates back much farther, but during the boom, Elevator Pitching was elevated (no pun intended) to the status of urban legend. So, where does the name come from?
As told to me, the legend suggested that entrepreneurs seeking capital would lurk in the office lobby of investors, quietly awaiting the arrival of their target — the Venture Capitalist. Then, once said VC arrived, the skulking entrepreneur (preferably skulking only in spirit), would follow the VC onto the elevator. Once the doors had closed, the founders would whip out a binder containing a few slides and pitch the investor their idea. These harried founders had only a few moments to pitch their ideas; for once the VC reached their office floor, one of two things would happen: the investor would invite them into the board room to hear more; or the investor would call security (literal skulkers having been apprehended long ago in the lobby).
And from this, the term and the legend of the Elevator Pitch was born.
Even though the bubble has long since burst, the Elevator Pitch parable still rings true today. When it comes to pitching, you need to envision yourself in an elevator with your target audience, knowing that you only have a few floors to capture their attention, build credibility, and most importantly leave them craving for more.
What is an Elevator Pitch?
