A good elevator pitch is never a monolog

Last November I posted an installment in my job search and career development best practices series on structuring an effective elevator pitch. I attended a meet and greet networking event recently that has gotten me thinking about this very important part of the job search process. I saw and heard too many people offer pitches that were basically on course for the types of detail shared. Some of them ran too long but even when they were giving what was ostensibly the right length pitch, these people still left their new “networking contacts” rolling their eyes and looking for an exit. So all they really did was to walk around the room finding potential bridges and burning them. I decided to write a second posting on this topic to address more directly how to prevent this from happening.

I did say in my earlier posting that “the goal of an elevator pitch is to develop a conversation” but I mostly focused on what to say and how much to say, and on keeping the time length of your pitch within bounds – the “you” side of this encounter. I want to switch gears and focus in the “them” side of this now and on the people you seek to network with, with their needs, interests and priorities.

Ultimately, an elevator pitch will fail you if you cannot positively connect with the people you share it with, and draw them into a conversation where they get to share their thoughts and perspective too. If you simply focus on yourself, you will deny them the opportunity to participate and you will tell them that you are not actually interested in them. A good elevator pitch has to be a dialog, and in this you simply have to prepare a brief, focused set of details your would like to share as to who you are, what you do and what you are looking to do next. But you need to listen, and you should be ready to switch to a plan B in what you say if you find yourself facing an unexpected opportunity you would find of value too.

• Ask questions, and make sure you ask at least a few more open ended questions that would draw out the person you are sharing your pitch with.

This shows your interest in the people you meet with and it gives them the chance to offer you value in information and opportunity you would otherwise never know of. This will get them more interested in what you have to say too, and increase the likelihood that they remember it and you. You will, after all, have helped them connect your story in their mind to their own and to this two way conversation – more points of connection to what they are interested in means more avenues in their thinking that would bring them back to what you said.

• Body language speaks first as an early indicator, and even before the people you meet with start to consciously think in terms of what their body language says.
• You body language and level of interest and animation help to shape their body language.

There is a lot to this set of points. First of all, smile and make and keep eye contact. Lean a bit forward while respecting the sense of personal space of the people you meet with and if you are meeting someone from a different cultural framework, remember they may have a different sense of personal space than you do. So watch their eyes and how they position themselves, and for any drifting away from engaged connection with you and your shared conversation.

• Always have a business card ready to hand to the people you share your elevator pitch with, and ask for their card too, or at least their email address (and write it down if need be).
• If you get a card, right after your conversation with them write down the date and a brief indicator of where you met them, and a word or two as to what was said.
• If you don’t do this you will loose most of the potential value from having this card as a week or two later you will have forgotten the context for having the card or who this person is.
• Promptly follow through by reconnecting. As I say in my laws and principles of social networking: “Real networking does not begin with the initial point of contact. It begins with the second, as that is when a real conversation begins.”

I find myself thinking of one particular person I met with at this meet and greet networking event. He did have business cards and gave them out but he steam rolled through his pitch without looking anyone in the eye and it was totally disconnected from any effort on anyone’s part to ask questions or share any information in reply. When I sent out my follow-up emails the next day I set his card aside and did not bother – an omission I almost never make in my follow-throughs. This was a worst case example, and to compound it I am fairly sure this potential networking contact had been a bit too actively involved with the open bar, making things much worse.

• Be relaxed and receptive, and listen at least as much as you speak.
• Have the key points planned and ready to share as your pitch but be ready to step back and let your new contact talk too.
• With this approach, you are more likely to gain long lasting value and the precise duration of your pitch in this conversation, as measures as if given as a single piece monolog, is not as much an issue.