Elevator Pitch or Speech
June 13th, 2008I’ve always been attracted by the Americans’ communication abilities.
Though the best school was the rethorical greek one, most of the greatest communication teaching in the last 60/70 years have come from the States.
In my last journey in San Francisco, in April, I was so lucky to attend to one of these teaching that in a way have enlighten me. Todd Wilkens, design researcher in Adaptive Path, a company based in San Francisco, spoke about the Elevator Pitch (or Speech).
Sometimes you have a great idea (business, creative or whatever) and you need to communicate to a venture capitalist, your boss or whatever. Well, you don’t have so much time because who’s listening to you doesn’t have time as well. You have only time for an elevator ride… 2, 3 max 5 minutes and you have to impress and convince him to put the money.
Tell who you are, what about your idea, who your idea is for and who isn’t for and explain differences from your competitor (Very similar to the 5W in the journalism lesson).
That’s the elevator pitch.
In this site some 1 minute elevator pitch, commented and rated by users.
I think this is a very effective way to learn to communicate and it’s worth more than thousand University lessons.
Make an exercise now: think of your best idea ever and try to build your EP up.
I know it’s funny.
