Saying what you do in an interesting manner in under two-minutes has been the recommended method of getting your foot-in-the-door with whom you want to make a connection, upon an accidental meeting or an exchange of business cards. This is the way the traditional elevator pitch was done but no more.
Today, people have less patience, are easily distracted and have less time to listen to your sales pitch. We're just too busy. Prospects will immediately tune you out, turn off and move on. This is partly because our methods of social interaction have grown exponentially, which also means we're overloaded with stimuli from boundless sources. We just can't take much more or can we?
According to a study from Microsoft, today's attention span is only eight seconds. That's less than the attention span of a goldfish, which is nine seconds.
Illustration by: Janice Celeste
If you want to get your point across, condense your elevator pitch to capture short attention spans. According to a study from Microsoft, today's attention span is only eight seconds. That's less than the attention span of a goldfish, which is nine seconds. Get the point? You'd have more time to explain your elevator pitch to a goldfish than a human being before they tune you out, therefore make your pitch short and sweet to be successful.
I challenge you to come up with a Twit-Pitch for your company. Create a short statement that can be used on Twitter, which describes what you do in 140 characters or less, including the hashtag. Verbally, you wouldn't read the hashtag since it's only necessary for written communication on social media sites like Twitter, but that makes it much more challenging because you really have less characters in which to work. See if you can do it? You can even abbreviate your Twit-Pitch to make it fit the limitations of 140 characters. Your opportunity to pitch someone may only be a tweet away and you might not even know it.
Create your Twit-Pitch with 140 characters or less, including the hashtag.
Schedule your Twit-Pitch to rerun on Twitter as a repeat tweet and see what happens. Add it to your Twitter profile and use it for other social media. If it's good, someone may actually re-tweet it. You could even make a new business connection from your Twit-Pitch on social media.
Within minutes of creating my new Twit-Pitch several followers retweeted it.
Your Twit-Pitch can be used as a substitute for your in-person elevator pitch. You've summed up what you do for a living in a soundbite and it will leave your subject wanting to know more. Once you have their attention, you can go from pitching to having a conversation.
Don't just pitch at that point. Ask what they do for a living and listen for ways that you can support your new contact's business needs. Listening is key to starting a lasting connection. Discover what they are looking to do this quarter, this year, and see how you might assist with what you do. Exchange business cards, then see if they have time for a follow-up lunch meeting and actually follow-up.
Your Twit-Pitch is more than just your foot-in-the-door, it's a way to pique curiosity. It's part of your brand. It's your conversation piece. What is your Twit-Pitch?
Janice Celeste is the founder of the Encore Entrepreneur Institute, an advocacy organization for entrepreneurs ages 50+. You can follow her on Twitter and on her Blab live stream show, ENCORE @EncoreInstitute. 