The simplest way to improve your Elevator Pitch is to – be more specific.
An insurance broker in our Expand Your Referral Network program starts with:
I help business owners protect their income
That’s actually an ok start.
There are two benefits, though, to making it more specific.
1. Self-selection
You want your Elevator Pitch to weed people out. FAST.
Huh?
Yes, every second you spend talking to tire-kickers or the curious-with-no-budget distracts you from meeting people who could be a perfect match.
You don’t get in front of perfect prospects by being wishy-washy or trying to appeal to everyone.
“Protect their income” is one of those generalizations that sounds like it could kinda of apply to everyone – I mean, who doesn’t want to protect their income?
Well, he’s not looking to meet people who put it in a mattress, or bury it in their great-aunt’s basement, or invest it in BitCoin.
Who is he looking to meet?
Good! That’s the right question!
We’ll talk about that after we discuss the second benefit:
2. Visible and Obvious
When your Elevator Pitch focuses on a visible and obvious attribute, other people can spot good referrals for you.
That’s the holy grail of networking!
You don’t have to talk to everyone. You just say the magic words and people will approach you with the right introductions.
But, it’s not obvious who is “protecting their money,” so using this as an Elevator Pitch leads to – yes, you guessed it – zero leads.
So what did our insurance broker come up with?
I help dentists protect their income with disability insurance
Aha!
People know if they are dentists.
And dentists know whether or not they have disability insurance.
More importantly, people know whether people are dentists.
“But he doesn’t work just with dentists!” wail the people who prefer to use wishy-washy generalizations at the expense of actual, profitable referrals.
Yes, our insurance broker friend can write disability insurance policies for anyone. In fact, he can write any kind of insurance policy for any kind of person.
But that’s not a good way to describe his work if he actually wants profitable referrals.
Because specifics starts conversations.
“I help dentists protect their income with disability insurance” leads to the following productive conversations:
- “Interesting you would say that… my dentist was worried what would happen to his practice if he got hurt”
- “Disability insurance… hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. Do you work with photographers?”
- “What other types of insurance can help people protect their income?
How do you describe what you do?
(Hint: BE SPECIFIC!)