The Trouble With Elevator Speeches

The elevator speech is that tightly scripted, 30-second introduction that should pack as much information about a person as possible in an engaging, persuasive, and interesting way, right?

Unfortunately, even the "best" elevator speech can be an express trip to oblivion instead of a shining personal marketing moment. Your short spiel can drain the power from that all-important first impression, leaving clients impatiently shaking their heads.

Elevator speeches do work for some people, but many marketers find that those pithy intros lead to a free fall.

Going up?

Actor Tim Robbins popularized the elevator pitch in the 1992 movie The Player. Robbins portrayed a beleaguered movie executive who listened to 125 movie pitches a day.

Those pitches had to be boiled down to the essence of the idea, without a hint of extraneous information—"Think Gone with the Wind meets Star Wars, directed by Woody Allen."

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Michael W. McLaughlin is the coauthor, with Jay Conrad Levinson, of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants. Michael is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and the editor of Management Consulting News (www.managementconsultingnews.com) and the Guerrilla Consultant. For more information, visit www.guerrillaconsulting.com.