Whether you’re catching your prospect on the phone, or via email, you typically only have a short window to let them know what your company and your solution is all about. But while the tendency can be to try to cover all the bases as quickly as possible, according to sales executive and trainer Jeff Hoffman, that’s an urge reps need to resist at all costs.

Instead of bombarding your customer with everything you can do for them, it’s far more constructive to give them an extremely tailored and targeted taste of what you can provide and to leave them curious to learn more. Of course, that’s something easier said than done. In fact, for many salespeople, saying more by saying less can be one of the most difficult — but effective — skills to learn.

In this episode of Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman, Jeff explains what makes a perfect elevator pitch by outlining five key points to success.

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Key Takeaways

“Many people take all the things that makes their product or service unique, and then they try to boil it down in some perfectly crafted 15 second diatribe. They vomit all over a prospect or customer when they say, “What do you do?” Thinking that the question was, ‘What do you do, can you describe it to me?’ That’s not really what it is about.“

— Jeff Hoffman, M. J. Hoffman and Associates

* Be interesting and inspire curiosity. You don’t want to be complete in your description, you can to capture prospects attention just long enough where they form a question. [2:36]

* Consider your audience. What is the question that you want your prospect to ask?  [3:59]

* Use hyperbole. [5:35]

* Sell your strength. Whatever your do that sets you apart from competitors…this is your time to share it. [6:40]

* Limit your pitch to one thought. [6:49]

Transcript

Jeff: This is Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman and CeCe Bazar. For more information go to OpenView Labs or MJHoffman.com.

CeCe: Hi everybody, and thank you so much for coming back, and joining us for Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman. Jeff, thanks so much for being here.

Jeff: Oh, yes, CeCe Great to be back.

CeCe: We have had such a great response to the first series of podcasts that we’ve done. We’ve decided to bring Jeff back in, to talk a little bit more about sales. This time we want to talk about something really important, Jeff. We want to talk about elevator pitches. When you get a prospect either in person, or on the phone, or via email, you have a very short window to let them know what you do. Let’s talk a little bit about elevator pitches. Is it a buzzword or is it something that’s real?

Jeff: It’s definitely real, unfortunately, it’s been kind of rendered almost ineffectual by the label elevator pitch, but it’s definitely real. You know, the challenge with it, you said it well. I mean, we do need them. We need them in a very specific place, usually early in the sales process. Some of the problem we have is in that term elevator pitch, which can be very misleading. The notion of it, you know, is that you’ve got this elevator ride with one of your prospects.

CeCe: Right.

Jeff: You’ve got this captive audience for a select number of floors. You’ve got a limited amount of time, which I think is probably true with an elevator pitch. You have a captive audience, which is also true in a real elevator ride. I think that’s where a lot of people, you know, tend to write something that isn’t very, you know, elevator pitch worthy. That’s probably the first thing we should probably talk about.

CeCe: All right. What do you think makes the cut when you’re writing...