How to Write an Elevator Pitch [+ 7 Examples]

Your elevator pitch helps you quickly share your credentials and expertise with investors and employers who can invest in your startup or employ you.

Jobseekers, professionals, and entrepreneurs use elevator speeches to introduce their skills or business ideas to a potential employer or business partner. In the business ecosystem, elevator statements are highly effective content to impact the audience quickly.

When entering the job market or building your professional career, you must create several elevator pitches for different situations. How do you create effective elevator statements — might you ask? Continue reading this article to know more.    

What Is An Elevator Pitch?

An elevator pitch or statement is a brief speech introducing yourself to connect with someone in spaces like an elevator, lounge, business buffet, walkway, etc. Here you must get across a few key points of your professional career or project idea to spark interest in the listener. 

Professionals like marketers and entrepreneurs call it an elevator pitch or speech because it takes about 30 to 60 seconds to finish your pitch. By this time, the CEO or investor to whom you are explaining your pitch should reach their desired floor and deboard the elevator.

You must keep your elevator statements handy at business conferences where there are plenty of chances to meet investors, potential employers, startup CEOs, and even CEOs from multinational enterprises. This will work as a conversation starter, and the listener may ask you for a follow-up meeting. 

When you interact or make connections with someone professionally, you must use elevator speech instead of usual greetings and business card exchanges. It gives the listener a reason to network with you and keep you in their minds should they need to hire or invest in your project.

Successful business professionals suggest you keep a few elevator speeches in your mind whenever you visit places where you can bump into a VIP to whom you are eager to talk about a job or investment request.

Length of an Ideal Elevator Pitch

The length of an effective elevator speech should match the period of the opportunity to speak to an important business person or investor. Since today’s elevators are much faster than old days, your elevator statement should also be concise and brief.

The elevator pitch could be anything between 30 seconds to 60 seconds. However, the modern elevator speech concept suggests that you have 118 seconds to deliver it when the listener goes to the top floor from the ground level.

Whether the brief pitch lasts 30 seconds or 118 seconds, the success depends on the first 8 seconds. It is when you need to tell something that interests the listener.

However, throughout 30 seconds, 60 seconds, or 118 seconds, you need to deliver the following in a balanced mix. You can reduce the number of factors for shorter pitches, but all of these should be there:

• The good and exciting things about your brand, resume, product, or project idea.
• Give some quantitative figures about growth expectations.
• Mention your company name, project name, brand name, etc., so the listener finds the speech interesting.     

Now, let’s discuss the best practices while writing an elevator pitch.

How to Write an Elevator Pitch

Writing an elevator speech is easier than you think. You need to follow a template of content that you need to mention. Rest will come automatically to you if you truly know your brand, your company, your startup idea, or the product you are selling.

Here is an effortless and easy-to-understand template to write a superb elevator statement: 

#1. Explain Yourself, the Company, or the Brand

Name the project, brand, or company in the introduction. If you are seeking a job, you can mention your university, specialties, monetizable skills, problem-solving credentials, etc.  

#2. Describe the Function of Your Brand or Company

For companies, brands, or startup ideas, explain the exact issue or business problem you want to solve. Also, do not forget to mention how cost-effective your services are than your competitors.

If you need to explain your career functionalities, mention your existing job roles like working as a trainee digital marketer, SEO, content manager, now handling a team of content creators, etc.   

#3. Ask a Question or Request to the Network

Ask when you can present a full demonstration on the client’s site for product or service selling. Alternatively, for startup aspirations, you might ask if the venture capitalist firm is looking to invest in the idea you propose.

You can ask for an interview to demonstrate your credentials and skills in detail. At least, you can request the listener to connect on LinkedIn for business networking. 

Also, include the following elevator statement best practices in your brief speech:

• Persuasive language to hook the audience
• Mention the skill highlights as many as you can
• Skills and credentials should be relevant to the listener
• The pitch should be full of positive and active words and phrases
• There should be a goal or objective
• If possible, research the background of the audience 

Now that you have understood the best practices let’s explore what you need to avoid in your elevator speech.

Things to Avoid in Elevator Pitch

You can successfully bag an investment, get a job interview, or grow your business connections if you omit the following from your elevator speech:

• Do not use the same elevator speech for different businesses, audience backgrounds, and situations.
• Refrain from remembering exact words. Be creative and replace words if you do not recollect instantly.
• Do not include unclear, unfocused, irrelevant content or phrases in your elevator statement.
• Do not speak unusually fast. If the opportunity window is short, cut down on redundant content.
• Avoid bombarding the speech and escape the scene as you become nervous in front of a VIP. 

Let’s learn the tips for delivering the perfect elevator pitch.

Tips for Delivering the Elevator Pitch

Your elevator statement will make an impact on the listener if you follow these tips while delivering it: 

• Be energetic when speaking.
• Use a persuasive tone while talking.
• Body language is the key. Show politeness and respect, and slightly lean forward.
• Use your arms to display positive gestures, and do not keep them crossed. 
• Behave normally, maintain eye contact, and blink as usual.
• Maintain a professional body distance from the listener.
• Rehearse your elevator speech a lot but do not memorize to deliver it as is.

Next, let’s look at some of the elevator pitch examples.

Elevator Pitch Examples

Find below some real-world elevator pitches that truly work: 

Home Stay Platform

This Airbnb elevator statement is a perfect example of how to present innovative ideas to the audience. People are often doubtful of new ideas and do not even know whether they need them on not.

For them, you need to create a pitch that will essentially link your company offering with the existing market players that offer popular features.

In this pitch, Airbnb focused on the problems travelers face regarding hotel expenses and how their company can offer a cost-effective solution.

Co-Working Space

In this elevator pitch, WeWork followed the simple template: showing the problem and offering a solution. It highlighted its target audience, showed people’s problems, and finally pitched its solution.

You can also create a similar elevated pitch that shows how your business will help people save time, money, or more. Using numbers in your pitch will help you illustrate your point.

Real-Estate Company

The following example is an ideal elevator pitch for the real estate industry:

“With market fluctuations, the home-buying process is a headache.

Our company helps first-time homebuyers get their dream house using an amalgamation of education, financial counseling, and proprietary tools. Here, our representatives meet with every client to cover their questions. 

Moreover, we also share regular updates on new house listings, price changes, and recent sales prices so you can have a fair idea about market trends.

100 first-time home buyers have made their crucial decision with the help of our company, and you can, too. Schedule a call today to find out more.”

This elevator speech touched upon the user problem and focused mainly on the company’s offerings. It has become a catchy pitch by showing all the value it adds to your hunt for a home.

SaaS Application Developer

If you develop SaaS software, the following elevator pitch is a perfect example for you:

“Your software is too awesome. Its awesomeness is why new users can not see its capabilities immediately.

ShowUp is the user onboarding platform created for extraordinary SaaS platforms like yours. It helps your users discover its functionalities.

ShowUp’s ability to predict and prevent churn using engagement analytics sets it apart from the other solutions.

Don’t let the learning curve become a churning curve. Try ShowUp now.”

This pitch grabs the attention of its target audience by calling them awesome. Then, it discusses how it will help them (SaaS companies) with its features. Finally, the pitch ends with a touch of fear and CTA.

Hiring or HR Software 

Here is a fine example of an elevator pitch for hiring an application developer:

“Hiring is hard. We’ve made it easy. 

WorkingPPL is a revolutionary cloud-based ATS. It helps you find, foster, and hire the talent your organization needs for assured success.

Our mission is to aid startups to thrive, and they can do that using our technology. We aim to help you build brilliantly diverse teams and thus positively impact the humans in business. Let us provide you with the most efficient workforce as you focus on growth.”

In this pitch, the focus is on how companies will be benefitted from using this software. Instead of describing its features, it tries to persuade the target audience with how it will help them grow. 

Dentist

If you are a dentist or medical professional, you will find this pitch to be useful:

“For many people with severe dental issues, the trip to the dentist is more painful than the issue itself. 

But not at DentFriend. It’s the place no one will judge you, and the wait time is never longer than 15 minutes. Also, you can choose the music!

Our 100 five-star Google ratings and reviews will tell you more; however, you really have to experience DentFriend to realize how convenient or, dare we say, enjoyable your trip to the dentist can be.

So, let us schedule your first appointment today.”

This elevator pitch describes the pain point of the target customers and how they can help with that issue. It also showcases the clinic’s unique features and finishes with a CTA. It also includes social proof by mentioning the good Google rating it has.

Personal Therapist

Check out this elevator pitch from a website that offers online mental therapy:

“Help for You is an online personal therapy platform that offers live chat, audio, and video therapy sessions. Now, you don’t have to meet someone in person for therapy or speak before a camera if you don’t want to. 

Help for You is more affordable than in-person sessions and can be accessed from anywhere worldwide. Our organization assesses your needs and connects you with your accredited therapist within 48 hours. 

Visit our website and join five million people who took control of their mental health with the assistance of experienced professionals.”

This elevator pitch is all about what the company has to offer you. Features have been nicely described, and in the beginning, there was a small comparison with the manual therapy sessions.

Final Words

Elevator pitches are useful ice breakers. It initiates conversations. Hence, elevator statements must be highly effective, and there should be a value addition for the listener’s time.

The above article taught you the basics of an elevator speech, like its definition, length, dos and don’ts, best practices, how to write one, etc. Additionally, you also discovered some outstanding elevator statement examples.

After listening to an impactful and effective elevator pitch, the CEO or venture capitalist might ask you to meet them for further discussion on the job position or startup project. 

For such a meeting, you must produce a slideshow of your plan, skills, credentials, experiences, etc. You can use these presentation creation tools to create extraordinary slideshows.