Earlier this year I had the privilege of being asked to teach a couple classes at a local Expo. For one of the classes I was on a panel with two other speakers. We each taught different facets of marketing. One of the other speakers gave a presentation on how to guarantee that you get referrals when you give your 30 second elevator pitch at a networking event. In a nutshell he suggested the best way to get referrals at a networking function was to include the following in your pitch:
”Today I’m looking for (fill in the blank). If you know of someone who (fill in the blank), please write their name & e-mail on the back of your card and pass it to me before the end of the meeting.”
He went into more detail about how and why it worked for getting introductions to qualified leads. All of it was very good advice and I made a note that I should try it one day.
The next week I attended a networking meeting & several of the people there had been at the Expo and attended the class I taught. As I listened to them giving their networking pitches a theme emerged. One by one they all gave the same pitch, word for word:
“Today I’m looking for (fill in the blank). If you know of someone who (fill in the blank), please write their name & e-mail on the back of your card and pass it to me before the end of the meeting.”
After hearing it from the 5th person I had to fight to keep from laughing. As I looked out at the room, I could see people mouthing along with what they new was coming as soon as someone started in with, “Today I’m looking for. . . “ Looking at those lined up to do their pitches, I could see fear in the eyes of the people who thought they had struck gold with this new technique, only to discover it was fast becoming a joke & they didn’t have anything else prepared. Even though I could see it pained them to do so, they gave the pitch anyway, hoping some form of amnesia would strike the audience and they would forget the fact that they’d heard the exact same words from at least 10 people that day.
This is an extreme example, but it illustrates an important point. No matter how good your elevator pitch is you need to be prepared to mix it up a little and play to the room. In order for an elevator pitch to be successful it has to grab the listener’s attention and draw them in. No matter how much people want to pay attention, if things become too predictable they tend to zone out. As the person who’s giving the pitch, your job is to snap them out of their slumber and get them to take an interest in what you’re saying. It’s a catch-22. People need to hear your message several times before it sinks in, but if the same people are hearing the same thing every time – they’ll stop paying attention because they know exactly what’s coming next. I usually recommend having 3 or 4 variations on your pitch to keep the audience interested.
Has anyone else ever been to a predictable copy cat meeting like this one?
By the way – I attend this same group every week. In the 9 months since this happened, nobody has given this pitch again. Maybe I’ll use it next time.
Because of Thanksgiving I won’t be making a blog entry next Thursday, but I will be making a post on December 1st for Bloggers United. Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving & I’ll talk to you on the first.
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