Guess what? You’re an aspiring singer-songwriter. You have a killer demo in your pocket and Tommy Matola just stepped into the elevator with you. What do you do?
This is, of course, the prime situation for what is known as your “elevator speech.” An elevator speech is a fifteen to thirty second commercial about yourself. In those few short moments, you must sell yourself to whomever you have encountered.
My example is, admittedly, a bit far-fetched. But elevator speech situations really do happen often. Let’s say you are at work heading up to finance and the CFO jumps on the elevator with you. Currently you are stuck in the mailroom, but you have a finance degree and background. Now is your chance to get some real face time with someone who makes decisions.
The point here is that you should always be ready to effectively and quickly pitch you. Regardless of whether you are a painter or a car mechanic – or both – you never know when an opportunity could present itself.
In my case, I could tell fifteen people that I’m a business systems analyst and each of those fifteen people would walk away with a different idea of what I do. These days job titles are becoming less and less telling of what a person actually does that counts. Instead of offering up my job title – which is a great example because it is one of the most wide-ranging titles in IT right now – I ought to have a list of interesting bullet points prepared or a sentence that says what I really do.
For instance, “I make sure The Department employees have access to their information, know how to enter new information and can retrieve whatever information they need whenever they want it.” Yes, it’s a bit cheesy, but it makes it clear that I play a key role in the smooth operation and success of The Department. With my particular job – and a lot of other technical occupations – I have to be careful not to go into tech-speak with the wrong people. The CEO doesn’t care that I use a lot of CASE statements to make sure that there’s no duplicate data in my T-SQL queries. On the other hand, The CTO might.
This brings up the idea of having a flexible elevator speech that can be tailored based on your audience. This doesn’t need to be far-reaching by any means, you just need to make sure you are giving the right information to the right person for maximum impact.
Let’s use another example and say that I’m an admin assistant. I could say, “I answer phones and file paperwork.” Or, I could say, “I organize information and provide customer service to keep things running smoothly in the office.” While you are essentially saying the same thing, you have reworded it to show the benefits of your duties, rather than just an “I do this” statement. Adding a “because” factor to your elevator speech can greatly increase its interest and effectiveness.
Self-promotion is often not a comfortable suit for anyone to slip into, but we all must do it at one time or another. I say, instead of doing it just when you have to, be ready to use any opportunity you can (without being obnoxious or braggy about it, of course) to make business associates aware of problems you solve and the positive outcome your work creates.
And, remember, “elevator speech” is only a term. This type of self-promotional message can be used in any medium from email and IM to resumes and social networking profiles. If you are delivering in person, be clear and make eye contact. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t come off as timid or shy. If you don’t sell yourself effectively, who will?
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