What is an elevator pitch? It’s you introducing yourself and what your company does in a succinct and interesting way. That first impression is essential to ensuring the best candidates are interested in joining you and your company.

You probably have thirty seconds to make a good impression with your elevator pitch, so it’s definitely something you should work on and refine before you find yourself on the spot. The elevator pitch is a golden opportunity to make a great first impression and impact to attract top talent.

I’ve attended hundreds of networking events and I’ve always been surprised at the varying degrees of success with social or classic ‘elevator’ pitches. The moment to use your elevator pitch comes when you hear questions like: “What do you do?” or… “What kind of business are you in?” I’ve heard some fairly confusing answers to that question recently. Some of them, in fact, have been downright terrible. Along the lines of…

“So, what do you do?”

“I run a B2B/B2C, geo locator app plug-in that increases proximity marketing for geo tagging and meta data tracking for large scale consumer brands and IP rights holders.”

Horrendous. My mind glazed over instantly. That was an actual pitch that someone said to me, I kid you not.

Instead, keep it simple and human, and focus on the benefit you deliver. The aim is to leave the person you’re talking to excited and ready to talk, not totally baffled and ready to move away from you. Try saying something like this instead…

“I’ve built an app that helps big brands understand where their customers are and what they’re doing in different locations. Our technology gives brands information that increases their sales conversions and ultimately helps grow my clients’ businesses.”

A great elevator pitch should leave the person who hears it feeling enlightened, engaged and intrigued to find out more about you and your business. (The opposite emotional responses are confused, bored and disengaged but most people are way too polite to ever tell you that’s how they’re feeling!)

Here are some suggestions on how to make a great elevator pitch in a social or business networking environment:

1. Start with ‘why’ – tell the person why you do what you do. Why does your business exist? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Why are you passionate about it? What gets you excited?
2. Have confidence – be bold and be self-assured. This is your chance to shine and make an impact so don’t blow it by mumbling, looking at the floor (or far worse, over the person’s shoulder) and speaking incoherently. If you struggle with these things, practise and try it out on friends and colleagues until your confidence improves.
3. Tell a story – try and put some emotive storytelling into your elevator pitch. We all love a good story, so think about your own personal experiences. Cold hard logic and facts about why your business is brilliant are not enough on their own. Remember: logic makes people think; emotion makes people act.
4. Be passionate – delivering your elevator pitch should get you excited. Your face should light up when asked what you do. If you aren’t excited by it, then why should the person you are talking to be?
5. Jargon buster – avoid jargon. I’ll say that again: avoid jargon! There is already too much of it in business today. If you really want to speak technically and dazzle them with your business brilliance, then fine – but keep it for later. The time for showing technical brilliance isn’t during your elevator pitch. That can come later, when you have more time with a potential candidate, and they already have a sense of what you do.
6. Keep it simple – as human beings we usually like to get things straight away, so keep it very, very simple, at least initially. Don’t make it any harder than it needs to be for the person you’re talking with to understand what you do. A good test is, would your granny or a ten-year-old child understand what you do if you told them? That might sound too simplistic but trust me, that’s a better place to start than confusing the hell out of someone and then trying to clarify it.
7. Add value – you’ve covered why you do what you do. Now think value. What’s in it for them? How do you deliver value and help them? Think value, impact and results. Which aspects of your elevator pitch will they relate to – and where’s the value for them?
8. Practice makes perfect – rehearse, rehearse and rehearse again. Change your elevator pitch – multiple times if needed. There is, of course, no such thing as perfection but there is certainly no harm in trying!
9. Enjoy it – pitching is a great way to share experiences, tell people about your business and get feedback on what you’re doing. Keep an open mind and most of all, have fun and enjoy it. It’s all part of the big game we play call business. The more you enjoy and practice any game, usually the more you enjoy it.
10. Learn and improve – once you’ve done all of these things, practised your new communication skills and begun to make consistently good pitches, understand what’s working and what isn’t. Are there specific aspects of your business you need to focus more or less on? Have you noticed people respond better to certain phrases you’re using? Now it’s time to observe, listen and improve.

Rob King is the author of Selling Creativity.