elevator speech

During a walk with my friend Patrick yesterday, the conversation turned to elevator speeches. Those are the marketing tool that you prepare to describe and promote your business in 30 seconds or less - approximately the amount of time you'd have to interact with a stranger in an elevator.

During coach training, we were advised to come up with a quick and pithy description of our coaching services. Even though there are lots of good formulas to help with this, I never had much luck with it. I'd create nice little scripts, but could never remember them later. Patrick suggested something I like so much better:

Just show up in the present moment, pay full attention to the person you are talking to, and trust that if they ask you what you do, the answer that arises naturally will be good enough.

Part of my resistance to the elevator speech concept was that retrieving my prepared script from of my memory banks took a lot of effort, and diverted my attention from the other person. I also hated feeling like I was reciting something that was out of context ... static, rather than dynamic ... dead, rather than alive and growing.

Skilled marketers would probably say that my blurb must have needed some fine-tuning, and that's certainly true! But maybe it's even truer that I'm just not a pre-scripted person.

It's nice to have faith that the fresh content springing from mind to mouth in the moment is adequate enough. Being spontaneously authentic might even be a better way to help folks who are looking for what we have to offer to recognize us when they find us.