by Ryan McMullen
Last month I wrote a column about two TV shows, “Shark Tank” and “The Profit,” and how it’s typically a good idea to listen to the advice of ultra-successful people. I hope our readership doesn’t think all I do is watch TV, but as I was once again watching “Shark Tank,” I saw a commercial for “Restaurant Startup,” a reality show about two successful restaurateurs who invest their money in new restaurant concepts.
I’ve never seen the show, so I can’t give you an educated review, but one of the stars said something that really struck a chord with me. He said, “If you can’t explain your restaurant in 30 seconds, you should not open it.” Now, he said it in a made-for-TV, arrogant and pompous way, but he is 100% correct.
So many times I meet small-business owners who cannot quickly and succinctly explain what they do. As we all know, a confused mind does not buy.
To help combat the confusion, we’re all taught to create our “elevator speech,” in which we put together a script that quickly summarizes our job or business. It’s basically a concise, oral résumé that goes in one ear and out the other.
Would you walk into a sales presentation and just spout out facts about you and how great your business is? I certainly hope not because nobody cares. People want to know how you can solve their problem. That’s it.
So when somebody asks, “What do you do?,” tell them what problems you solve. “What do you do?” is a perfect opportunity to subtly sell somebody on your product or service.
As luck would have it, there is a proven formula that has real psychological triggers to get people interested in you. It may be the most powerful three sentences you’ll ever use. Here it is:
• Sentence No. 1: Do you know how [your target audience] struggles with [your target audience’s biggest problem]?
• Sentence No. 2. I solve that.
• Sentence No. 3. I specialize in doing this for [your target audience] by [however you do it].
It is super-easy, engaging, powerful and easy to remember.
For example, when somebody asks me what I do, this is my response (this is also my LinkedIn profile summary):
“You know how small-business owners in St. Louis struggle to find ways to get new business from the Internet?
“I solve this.
“I specialize in doing this for small businesses in St. Louis by using my R4 method to make it virtually impossible for competitors to keep up with us.”
Do you think that might be a little better than me going on and on about Google, social media, PPC, SEO, blah, blah, blah?
You now have the formula to turn every introduction into a mini-pitch. The elevator speech has good intentions, but if you want people to really listen, stop boring everybody by talking about yourself and let them know how you can make their lives easier.
Ryan McMullen (ryan@stlouismarketinglab.com) is the owner of St. Louis Marketing Lab.
Submitted 9 years 298 days ago