The 30 Second Speech....aka an Elevator Speech?

Everyone needs a 30 Second Speech!

A 30 Second Speech, also known as an Elevator Speech is a clear, concise bit of communication that can be delivered in the time it takes to ride from the first floor to the top floor of a building in an elevator. As it relates to selling your product or services, it communicates who you are, what you can do for the prospect or how the prospect will benefit from working with you.

When we meet people they will usually give us 30 seconds or so to create a reason why they should listen to us beyond that time. They may talk with us longer but they may not be listening. A good 30 Second Speech creates interest and we want to create interest so we can move into the body of the sales call for a longer conversation with the prospect or client.

Basic Components of a 30 Second Speech include:

1. Who are you? Introduce yourself.

2. Tell them the business or the industry you are in. Be concise in your statement.

3. How will your products or services benefit the prospect?

4. What is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? What makes you different from the competition? Develop a statement of primary difference between you and your products or services and others. This differentiation is the single most important thing that sets you and your company apart from the competition. This statement should be intriguing and naturally want the prospect to learn more.

5. Always invite the prospect into the conversation with a question at the end of your 30 Second Speech.

30 Second Speech Tips and Suggestions.

In the Ultimate Sales Academy we focus on over a dozen tips and suggestions for improving the effectiveness of a personalized 30 Second Speech. In my mind, here are the top 5.

1) Make your 30 Second Speech sound effortless, conversational, and natural. Not canned.

2) Write and rewrite your speech, be concise and eliminate unnecessary words.

3) Practice your speech. No easy way out here. Use a digital recorder to help you. Play it over and over and re-record. Remember our speech classes where the instructor told us to practice our speeches in front of the mirror? Still good advice. You don't have to have it memorized word for word but you must know the main points.

4) Smile! A smile softens many a heart. A smile is the best way to show friendliness and enthusiasm, and a strong, firm voice is the best way to express confidence.

5) Be passionate about what you do. Passion will bring about natural enthusiasm.

Keep in mind the 30 Second Speech is the attention getter and starts the sales call. That is all it is designed to do. Well done and executed it will get you a receptive audience that will allow you to move into the body of the call.

How about an example? I am at an after hours business networking session and meet Mary Johnson....

Jerry: Hi, I am Jerry Wells, partner of the Ultimate Sales Academy

Mary: Hello I am Mary Johnson, President of Johnson and Associates

Jerry: Mary, my company, the Ultimate Sales Academy, specializes in helping individual sales people achieve greater sales by improving and updating their specific selling skills and techniques.
Mary, how would you rank your sales force in terms of performance and effectiveness?

I've focused on the 30 Second Speech as an attention getter and for starting a sales call however, the principles of a 30 Second Speech can also be applied to introducing a new idea, product, or service. But we will save that for another time.

Referrals

If part of your sales job requires you to make cold calls, you know how difficult they can be. How can you melt the ice with that potential customer and speed up the selling process? The best way to warm up a cold call is by using a referral.

Getting a referral is the action of obtaining a prospect's name from one of your existing satisfied customers.

Why should you do this? For most of us finding buyers is our biggest challenge. As aggressive sales people we never have enough buyers for our products and services.

Buyers are constantly bombarded with sales people calling and e-mailing trying to get in to see them- people and companies the buyers don't know and probably don't care to know. They don't know these people and they don't trust them. Trust is very important in the selling process and a good referral goes a long way in helping to develop that trust. We all know how long it takes to build trust in a relationship.

With a good referral, the buyer will enter the discussion being more receptive to your sales story. They will listen more carefully and have a tendency to trust you more since you are a good supplier to someone they know. Looking at the number, studies suggest a typical cold call generates only a 10% closing rate while a referral call generates a 25% - 80% closing rate!

How do you get referrals? Simple- just ask.

Talk to your existing satisfied customers and ask if they know of others who would benefits from your products or services. Remember to use benefit statements in your request. For example you might say, "Mary, thanks for your order. While we are talking, who do you know that would benefit from our...." (cost savings, speedy delivery, customized work, or whatever it is you are providing.) Using the phrase "Who do you know" will make your clients think of someone specifically. Using the phrase "Do you know anyone" will make it easy for the client to say they can't think of anyone. Use your probing skills here. Remember to always ask your client for permission to use his/her name before you call the referred prospect.

We are all in this together!

Watching the news this morning I was shocked to learn from various ‘experts’ that we were in a recessionary depression of global or even biblical proportions and that no matter what we do it is all going to fail and we will all die slow, painful and horrible deaths … whew!
OK, a bit of overstatement here but I’m allowed a bit of literary license. The point is that we ARE in difficult times in which many of our markets are shrinking and competition between vendors for the remaining sales is fierce!
What are we to do? Well, we can prescribe any and all our failures to the economy instead of ourselves which will may make us feel better but it certainly will not put groceries on the table or fund the kids college. Or, we could realize that, in these difficult times, to obtain our clients business we are going to have to be the most professional salesperson they deal with!
Now more than ever it is imperative that we continue to upgrade our personal skills talents and abilities. Customers are going to demand more and we, as professional salespeople, are going to have to deliver more than ever before. How do we become more ‘professional’? How do we build our skill base? It’s pretty easy and we all know the answer. We can take a sales class like Ultimate Sales Academy™'s 6 Figure Selling Skills, or we can read a book on sales skills or we can explore the internet for new and innovative ways of reaching out to our clients. We can take a look at what we are doing now and focus on improving our own processes. There are literally hundreds of things we can do to improve ourselves and, at the same time, improve our sales performance. The point is: In difficult times we must concentrate on improving those things that are within our control and NOT use the current economic conditions as a reason for our failure.
As Red Green says, ‘Remember I’m pulling for you, cause we are all in this together’!