There are other examples of elevator pitch templates but here are the main components:

Introduction:

Don’t forget to start off with your name and company.  For me this is much better than just jumping into to the rest of the message.

What do you do? Explain what you do succinctly.  If you are having a difficult time that should give you pause to think about your messaging.  You don’t need to get into the details, you will have an opportunity to get into more specifics as you work with the target through your path to sales success.

Benefits or Problems:

How are you helping the target?  Focus on the benefits that you can provide or the problems you can help with as part of your elevator pitch.  The customer does not need to how you do it, just how you can help.  Another option for this section is an origin story.  This explains why you started the business and what problem you are working on fixing.  We did some work with Jane Wang from Optimity several years ago. Jane has an impactful origin story explaining how and why she stared Optimity that is part of her elevator pitch.

Build Trust:

If you are talking with someone that doesn’t know you how can you build trust?  You can focus on customers you have worked with, reference your background as a subject matter expert, or link yourself to an organization the target might value. Again the key isn’t to have them buy your solution, but to move to a next step.

Next Step: 

What do you want to have as a next step out of your interaction? It could be a connection on LinkedIn, sign-up for a newsletter, or a scheduled meeting.  It should make sense with your path to sales success.

You can modify the elevator pitch for the method of communication. For a cold call you could include some questions or breaks, for a LinkedIn message you could shorten it, and for an email you could include some clickable links.

If you would like some help with your elevator pitch of other sales strategy components, reach out to me.