Everyone has heard of the “elevator pitch” and all entrepreneurs know they need one. Right? I’m talking about the ability to tell your business story in the time it takes the elevator to get the floor where your audience will egress. While everyone knows they need one, the confidence imbued in entrepreneurs — necessary to be an entrepreneur — often results in the overconfident belief that the pitch will magically flow when the time comes.

While I’m sure this sometimes works, the strategy is a mistake. A good elevator pitch can mean the difference between getting funding or not, forming a relationship with a key ally, or even closing a customer. Frankly, you simply don’t know how valuable that person you’re talking to might be.

So how to develop a great elevator pitch? Surprising, too, is the lack of familiarity with Geoffrey Moore. Amazingly, Moore’s Crossing the Chasm is still relevant, is still considered the “marketing bible” 18 years after its publication. I highly recommend this book to all entrepreneurs.

[There are, of course, significant criticisms of the Chasm model. As its name suggests, the book focuses on the "Crossing the Chasm" stage of corporate development, when businesses must transition from selling to early adopters to selling to early mainstream customers. As Steve Blank points out, most businesses would be happy to ever achieve the level of development where the chasm was in sight. See this earlier SANDIOS post for an introduction to Blank's customer development methodology.]

In Crossing the Chasm, Moore provides a positioning exercise, with examples, that helps produce an elevator pitch. A powerful elevator pitch must include these components:

• Who your customer is
• Why they need your product, i.e., the pain you are solving.
• The name of your product (or web site)
• Your primary benefit to the customer, i.e., the compelling reason to buy, and
  
• Where you fit in the marketplace vis-a-vis the competition
  

It seems straightforward, but is harder than it looks. People often confuse benefit with differentiation and want to restate the “why?” when stating the compelling reason to buy. Here it is in Moore’s parlance:

For (target customer)
Who (statement of the need or opportunity)
The (product name) is a (product category)
That (statement of key benefit – that is, compelling reason to buy)
Unlike (primary competitive advantage)
Our product (statement of primary differentiation).

Let’s try an example:

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Initially, the pitch may come out clumsy and a bit unwieldy. Your final pitch emerges once you are able to incorporate all the components into your manner of speech.

Give it a try and if you’re brave, put your example in comments!