The Elevator Speech

I read recently that business people are in need of a better elevator speech. For the uninitiated, an elevator speech is what you should be ready to say should you find yourself on an elevator standing next to someone who might do business with you or offer you a job. The idea is you should be able to tell the person how wonderful you are and what’s in it for him to hire you. You must be able to do this in 118 seconds, the average length of an elevator ride.
You have to admit that a tiny, enclosed, rapidly moving, windowless room is an excellent spot in which to hold someone conversational hostage. The elevator speech has become a sort of conventional wisdom. If you’ve been in the business world for a while you have no doubt been made to feel inferior by someone who sniffs that you MUST have an elevator speech ready at all times. You feel inferior because even if you have one you know it isn’t good enough. In just 118 seconds you have to grab the prospect’s attention, tell her who you are, what you or your business has to offer and exactly how you can improve this stranger’s life beyond her wildest expectations. If you can do that, you might as well run for Congress. You’d be perfect.
But let’s give this a try: “Forty-sixth floor please. Imagine; 46 floors! Looks like a vertical roulette table doesn’t it? Say, my name is Vito Corleone. I sell imported olive oil by the truck load with an easy -you never miss a payment plan. If you buy your oil from me, you will be my friend and people will fear you.”
Okay, Vito’s elevator speech needs a little work. But I wonder if it’s worth the time. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, I suspect that proponents of the need for an elevator speech are the same kind of people who told us the world was flat, that Y2K was the next apocalypse and that everything happens for a reason. Conventional or fanciful, wisdom isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.
For starters, the vast majority of us don’t even live or work anywhere near a building that has an elevator; certainly not one that would take an average of 118 seconds to ride. A better term for elevator speech might be waiting area speech, since most of us actually do spend hours waiting to see the doctor, waiting for a table at the Bonefish Grill or waiting at the Wal-Mart checkout line. Just like elevators, waiting areas like these have at least a few people who might buy from us.
On the other hand, considering how wrapped up we are in our techno-gadgets these days, can you really get someone’s attention in one sentence without a snub nose 38 and words like “Your watch and your wallet now?” Please, it takes about seven sentences to get the kid at the fast food counter to pay attention to you. And how do you get the Donald Trumps of the world to remember your name when they are so hypnotized by the sound of their own names?
Then there’s the fact that very few of us are actually involved in a business that can be adequately explained in mere seconds. Anybody who’s ever read a company mission statement knows that. It takes about a hundred and eighteen minutes to read one of those. Being succinct about what you do sounds great in theory but in practice it’s not easy. Not if you want to impress your quarry. After all, an elevator speech without terms like osmosis marketing, B2C and a perennial favorite, synergy, will brand you as someone who lacks gravitas.
The one thing we are all good at though, is explaining why our new friend and potential benefactor can’t live without us. That is a lesson we are fated to revisit every election cycle. You know the formula: Big promises no cost to you. Works ever time.

Copyright 2012, Len Serafino. All rights reserved.