Creating an elevator pitch - a 1 minute summary of what you offer your customer - is most easily done when you have the help of a really rude friend who will frustrate you with ignorant questions and intentionally misunderstand what you're saying until you finally blurt out something so blunt a 3 year-old would understand it. The difficulty of creating an elevator pitch is that you're cursed with insider knowledge. As an expert, you'll want to answer the questions that no one is asking. This is always a mistake. Your prospective customer is profoundly, but innocently, ignorant. Your elevator pitch needs to be painfully simple. Ouch.
Roy Williams is the founder and president of international ad agency
Wizard of Ads. He's also the author of numerous books on improving advertising efforts, including
The Wizard of Ads and
Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads.
