Can you convincingly sell your agency in thirty seconds or less? Our experience suggests it’s unlikely.

Yet the creation of an elevator pitch designed to do just that will reap benefits beyond its potential for prospecting.  The process of creating the elevator pitch will unite the leadership of your organisation and sharing it with your people will help them focus on what’s most important to your success.

An elevator pitch is a message to prospective customers that can be delivered in a relatively short period of time (the time taken to ride and elevator with someone).  In this article we share some helpful tips on creating an elevator pitch for your business.

One of the toughest things, in a market where we’re meant to have knowledge about such a vast array of communication vehicles, is agency differentiation.

How can you create an impression quickly?

Firstly, how can you differentiate your agency?  It is difficult, especially as we all become multi-skilled and ‘full-service’ now embraces everything from advertisements to digital content creation and more.

But there are areas to look at to help you find something you can hang your differentiated hat on.  Think in terms of What you do, How you do it, Why you do it and Who you do it for.

Once you have determined your source of differentiation, in a sentence (less than 20 words) describe the service you deliver, using the differentiation.

For the purposes of this article I will use our own business as an example.

“We provide strategic business advice to creative companies”

So it’s simple – we provide strategic business advice.  But so do many accountants and other consultants in the area of numbers so we’ve chosen to differentiate through the people we do it for – creative companies.  We understand that creative cultures need protection and understanding, which results in different advice or advice differently delivered, so we specialise in this area.

Once you have the top line ‘description’ of what you do, try to find three notable benefits your clients will experience if they employ you.

Relate these benefits as specifically as you can to what you offer and what is unique about your offering.  But this is not what you ‘do’, it is the benefit the clients will derive from what you do – the ‘what’s in it for them?’ factor.

Taking our own business as a model, three key benefits clients working with us experience are:

1. A healthier bottom line
2. More engaged employees, contributing to the development of the business
3. More engaged clients, leading to long-term growth for the business

We might express this as: “We build value into creative businesses; bottom line value (profit) and value to the organisation’s people and clients”.

The final part of the process is to look for supporting evidence for each of the benefits you’ve identified. Give your audience a real reason to believe they would derive these benefits if they chose to work with you.

Continuing with our business example:

Bottom line value and long-term growth are key benefits and we might support that with: “Our clients experience above average profitability and significant growth in revenues. Our three key clients grew revenues by between 20% and 30% annually last year”.

Then you stitch this all together – a differentiated way of saying what you do, how that benefits the people you work with, and some evidence of success.

So our elevator pitch, in part, would sound something like this:

“We are management consultants for creative businesses. We build value into our clients businesses, value to their shareholders, their people and the clients they work with.  In the past year our top three clients grew between 20% and 30% whilst maintaining above industry average profitability.”

There you go – a concise 15-second pitch.

Re-capping the process:

1. Define what you do and try to be distinctive through specialisation, methodology, people, target clients / sectors or unique philosophy
2. Support this with between two and four key benefits clients will derive from working with you
3. Underline these benefits with real world examples