Unlocking Conversations: The Elevator Pitch Blueprint for Sales Success

Craft a compelling elevator pitch to spark curiosity, defuse objections, and propel sales conversations towards discovery in any situation.

Photo by Sung Jin Cho on Unsplash

Throughout our sales careers, the best practice we can uphold is the understanding that great discovery makes a great deal. One of the worst things we can do as salespeople is what my wife calls 'verbal diarrhea'—talking excessively to a prospect about how great our product or service is and how it is better than everything else since pepperoni pizza.

For anyone who prioritizes discovery, new challenges often arise during initial conversations with prospects. The first hurdle to overcome is the huge wall that any well-respected prospect puts up before engaging in an open conversation. This wall often hides behind hundreds of excuses, but the predominant one I have seen is the prospect's desire to push the salesperson to explain what they are selling before revealing any information about their true pain.

This wall is often a trap that seasoned salespeople use as a key to unlock a conversation, leading to a great discovery. In contrast, inexperienced salespeople often default to talking excessively about the product and killing the prospect with boredom.

So, how can we defuse this push towards explaining our product/service and position ourselves to start a great discovery?

The framework for a good elevator pitch

An elevator pitch is a very short explanation of what you do, designed to create curiosity in the prospect, encouraging them to either follow up or start a conversation. This can be used to either approach a cold prospect that you don’t know, of more often to defuse the trap that we discussed above.

I create this as a short way to remember how to create a good elevator pitch, using the V.A.U.P acronym:

1. Value: Based on the definition of value, we need to form a hypothesis about what value we can deliver to our prospect, associated with revenue, costs, or risks.

2. Approach: How do your deliver such value, this is where you get to talk about the product or service you are selling. This should be one sentence maximum!

3. Uniqueness: What are your differentiators compared to the market? If you have multiple, choose one or two that are the most significant or the most relevant for your prospect.

4. Proof: Give some proof, either social, technical or evidential to validate that you can deliver the value mentioned on the first item.

And that's it! Limit your elevator pitch to a maximum of 5 minutes and memorize it so that it becomes second nature when talking to new prospects in the wild. Use it as an opener for the conversation to engage in discovery. Never go into excessive detail; instead, follow up your elevator pitch with either a follow-up item (if you are introducing yourself to someone) or a great question (if you are deflecting a prospect's push to know more about your solution).

Let’s review some examples

The framework is made so that you can tailor it to your specific solution, but I would like to give some examples that may help to understand it better:

For a marketing agency:

• We can increase your return on ad spend within one year (value). This is because we've developed a proprietary algorithm that dynamically monitors and identifies underserved audiences within your target market, where the bid auction is the cheapest (approach). Thanks to this algorithm, we are more cost-competitive than other marketing agencies, leading to better performance (uniqueness). We have already helped 300 customers in your industry worldwide, most of them used your current agency before they switched to us (proof).

A moving company:

• We can guarantee no damages to your items when performing your move (value). This, because of the highest hiring and onboarding standards in the industry and training for our team (approach). We have a 5 star rating in google reviews when the average for moving companies in our state is around 3.8 stars (uniqueness). We were featured in WireCutter as the best moving company in our state (proof).

By focusing on understanding the prospect's true needs and challenges, and by utilizing a well-crafted elevator pitch, we can avoid the pitfalls of excessive talking and instead foster meaningful, engaging conversations. The VAUP framework provides a clear, concise method to present our value proposition, approach, uniqueness, and proof, enabling us to connect with prospects effectively. Remember, a great discovery leads to a great deal, so prioritize listening and understanding over talking, and let your discovery skills pave the way to success in your sales career.