We often have to provide our elevator pitch about who we are or what we do. Taking a moment to know who you’re speaking to goes a long way in being more effective.
Many people have been taught about the famous elevator pitch, the thirty to sixty seconds in which you summarize something. Often it’s yourself, but it could just as easily be your company, product or service, or anything else you’re involved in (e.g., why your rock-climbing group is the best one to go climbing with). People are taught how to hone a brief, yet compelling message.
Any good sales or marketing person will tell you there’s not just one message. Life insurance is life insurance, but the messaging of selling life insurance to a single thirty-two-year-old man with no kids is very different from selling to a fifty-three-year-old single mother of two kids. When I discuss the importance of my cybersecurity work, the way I explain it to an engineer is different from how I explain it to a CFO, and still different from how I explain it to a layperson. It’s the same tool, doing the same job, but they all perceive it differently and focus on different aspects of it.
When you do your elevator pitch, knowing your audience goes a long way. As an author and speaker, I’ve appeared on hundreds of podcasts. Before we record there’s often a discussion of who I am and the value I bring to the audience. I’ll generally have some background, if it’s a teen parenting podcast I’ll focus on a different approach than I would for a HR podcast. Keep in mind my content is the same, but I’ll package it differently. Suppose the topic is networking. For the first type of show I might talk about how college students should use the opportunity of college to diversify their networks and meet not only students but faculty, staff, and alumni. For the HR program I may focus more on building internal networks within a company. Same topic, different facets.
Even if I think I know, some clarification helps which is why when asked about my angle by podcast hosts, I reply, “I’d be happy to tell you more about me but first can you please tell me anything about who your audience is so I can best focus on their needs.” I often speak to audiences of entrepreneurs. There’s a wide range from solopreneurs (people who are sole practitioners like a marketing consultant), to small business owners (a few partners and some support staff, maybe 2-10 people in size), slightly bigger small business owners (say owners of companies 11-50 people), to startup founders (whose companies can be 1-10,000 people and making zero to hundreds of millions of dollars). They are all “entrepreneurs” but I’m not going to focus on hiring or scaling for the former groups, for example. Even for an HR podcast knowing if they are single HR staff at SMBs versus part of an HR team at larger companies I may select different topics, examples, or details, to be most relevant to that audience.
The same is true if you’re joining a company and introducing yourself to people in different departments. When meeting with people in engineering I’m going to get detailed about my engineering work and patents. When speaking with finance I’ll mention my work at Harvard Business School. For sales and marketing, I’ll mention my experience scaling up lead generation companies. Knowing something about them lets me provide a more relevant message of what I do that is useful for them.
If you’re at a conference or event and you’re both strangers you have a chicken and egg problem. You’re both unsure who the other person is and so both are shooting in the dark. You know the topic of the conference and maybe you see a company or job title on a name badge, but that’s about it. It’s ok, do your best introduction pitch and then provide additional information as you go.
The more important case is where there’s some contextual asymmetry. For example, when a new employee or consultant joins the company and is meeting people. The “incumbent,” that is the person who is not new, should provide some background first. The reason is that the incumbent has a clearer idea of what is relevant for the new hire to know than vice versa.
The idea of making your pitch context sensitive may or may not be new to you, the idea of priority ordering who speaks first likely is. Being cognizant of informational asymmetry and knowing how to guide the conversation to maximize relevant is a subtle but useful skill. It will help you both be more relevant for the other person.
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