Three Steps for an Effective Elevator Pitch

One of the biggest challenges when starting a small business is securing the capital needed to fund the business.

As an entrepreneur, you never know when a potential opportunity could arise to add an investor that could inject some funding to your business. This is why it’s important to develop an effective elevator pitch, where you can quickly and concisely share the vision of your business with a potential investor or customer.

An elevator pitch is a brief way of introducing yourself, getting across a key point or two, and making a connection with someone. It’s called an elevator pitch because it takes 2-3 minutes, which is roughly the amount of time you’d spend riding an elevator with someone. A solid elevator pitch should cover these three areas:

1. Identify the problem.

What’s the problem that your customer base is facing? Why is it so bad that it must be fixed now?

2. Share your solution.

Explain how your product or service is the solution for the problem that you just mentioned! Include a line or two about what makes it unique.

3. Support your statement.

And finally, support your statements with a fact, number, or anecdote of some sort. You want your audience to know that this problem affects more than just you and that you can scale your solution with funding from the right investor.

An effective elevator pitch should be quick and concise, but if you’ve done the job right, it is just the beginning. It should lead to future conversations, where your potential investor or customer can learn more about your product or service and what it could mean for them.