I think it’s fair to say that you’re always pitching, to some extent, when you’re at networking events. Whether you’re talking internally about projects and opportunities, or whether you’re responsible for new business and are trying to meet new clients, pretty much everyone at a networking event has something to sell.

For many of us, this puts us in a slightly uncomfortable position – we know that we’re ‘supposed’ to build relationships and have interesting conversations, and yet at the back of our minds, there’s also the knowledge that we’re ‘supposed’ to be selling something and time is running out!

This is probably why there are so many bad elevator pitches, and so much bad advice around – I’ve heard people say that you should ‘shock’ people with your elevator pitch, or do ‘something crazy to be memorable’.

It’s certainly easy to be memorable – I think that if I turned up at my next networking event naked, I’d probably be talked about for years! But what you, and I, want is to be memorable and credible. And being both memorable and credible is difficult, and it takes practise.

This is why I like the structure outlined in my previous post – you let someone know something interesting or memorable about yourself or your work, but then you immediately follow that with what you want – what you’re interested in, who you’d like to meet, what you need to know and so on.

It doesn’t need to be pushy, you’re just putting the information out there, in case anyone can help, and if the person you’re talking to can’t help you, then at least you’ve started a conversation.

For example:

(Person at networking event) “So, what brings you here?”

(ME) “Hi. My name’s Lee, and this kind of event is ideal for me. I am a magician and a motivational speaker for business, and I’ve spent the last five years taking the psychological and performing skills of magicians into business, helping people to pitch and present more effectively. I’m working a lot at the moment with small to medium size businesses where pitching to win new business is becoming increasingly important, and so I’m here to meet more people with that need. What about you..?”

It looks quite a lot on the page, but it takes about 12 seconds to say, and it follows the structure of :

You
Something Memorable
What do you want?

Notice that there’s no suggestion that I’m asking the other person for business, in fact I hand the conversation straight back to them with ‘What about you…’. However, they’ll have a clear idea of what I do, and I know from experience that the response is very often something like “Wow, a magician, that’s really interesting, so how do you bring that into business..?” And that’s exactly the response I want, since we’re now having a conversation.

Try it out for yourself, and see how you get on. If you want to drop any ideas into the comments box, please do, especially if you want to improve your elevator pitch!