# How good is your ‘elevator pitch’?

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/12/24/how-good-your-elevator-pitch/
- Published: 2008-12-24T09:33:42+00:00
- Author: Kevin Baughen

It’s a wonderfully trite descriptor but the elevator pitch is still a useful tool
to help us all focus on what we do from the perspective of the audience we want 
to communicate with.  In a nutshell, the elevator pitch is simply a short statement
that describes to a stranger what your organisation does, how you do it, why you
are good at it and who else agrees with you.

Short enough to be shared during an elevator journey and pithy enough to leave your
audience completely clear about what your organisation is all about.

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The concept has long been used as a sales tool in the corporate world when dealing
with busy clients and prospects.  In fact, the world’s best sales people will spend
hours refining their ‘pitch’ to glean maximum impact in the minimum time.  However,
in an increasingly media-saturated world with more choice and competition than ever
for disposable incomes (and grants and trusts) there is also a huge relevance for
charities.

So how good is your organisation’s elevator pitch?

You probably have a mission, core purpose, values and strategic aims but could you
articulate them to a stranger in less than 3 minutes?  Many gurus on the subject
believe that the best approach is to tell a story which engages the audience by 
giving enough information to pique curiosity whilst providing evidence for the claims
being made.

Here’s a quick example I found for an organisation which actually sells creating
elevator pitches as its core service.  When asked what his company did, the Director
answered;

“I’m in the corporate story-telling business. ABC ltd specialise in helping clients
figure out exactly how to tell their story in a way that will compel customers to
buy.  Human beings — you, me, your customers — connect better when the message is
in story form. If you want your customers to listen, and want what you’re offering,
you’ve got to capture them with a story. And we’ve helped clients like Charles Schwab
and Warner Bros. increase their lead conversion rate by up to 25 percent with a 
story we’ve helped them craft. What’s your company’s story?”

This example is lauded as successful for the following reasons:

 * It offers a more natural and personable response to the “so, what do you do for
   a living” question 
 * It qualifies the central claim by explaining the issue in both a human and a 
   business context
 * It lacks jargon and buzzwords so is easy to understand
 * At the end, it asks an open question of the listener which is one of the best
   ways to engage your audience (particularly if your job is to help create better
   answers to that very question!)

Could you tell an equally focused and balanced story about your organisation? 

I think this concept is useful in the charity sector to both underpin corporate 
fundraising as well as general communications activity.  Several charities already
have good elevator pitches and The RSPCA and NSPCC spring immediately to mind.  
Their clarity of purpose and established track record must make writing their pitch
relatively simple.  But for the rest of us, here are my tips for creating your own,
valuable elevator pitch:

 * Put yourself immediately in the mindset of your audience ie; don’t assume they
   know anything about what you do or how you do it
 * List out the end benefits of your activities, not the activities themselves. 
   For example, health charities may campaign and lobby on behalf of people with
   a particular condition but what they are actually doing is perhaps “helping society
   understand XXX to ensure people with XXX get a fairer deal from government and
   the public”
 * Focus on one or two core benefits.  Employ a wordsmith if necessary but you need
   to find a way of articulating your services in the collective, not individually
 * Only use lay terms and avoid jargon altogether
 * Include evidence to back up your claims.  This might be the number of people 
   you’ve helped, how long you’ve been established, awards you have won for your
   work (from the recipient’s perspective, not the sector’s)
 * Make it no more than one paragraph long
 * Give it to your best friend, partner, mum, postman or other unconnected person
   and ask them what they think it means.  If it aligns with what you wanted, great!

As a little bit of holiday fun, try and find your organisation’s elevator pitch 
or, if you don’t have one, draft a quick paragraph.  Then, look at your marketing
materials, campaigns, Impact Reports etc and try to find it in there.  Does the 
message come through loud and clear?  If it does, your organisation has a clarity
of purpose on which all your communications are being built and your target audiences
will be receiving consistent messages about what you do.  If not, what kind of story
are you telling?  Is it as compelling as it could be or do you have multiple stories
which could simply confuse your audiences?

Let me know how you get on!

Kevin Baughen is founder of [Bottom Line Ideas](http://www.bottomlineideas.com),
a speaker for [Cancer Research UK](http://www.cancerresearchuk.org) and a long-time
advocate of blurring the lines between best practice from both the commercial and
charity sectors.

 * **[What will be your 'business as unusual' strategy for 2009?](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/01/08/what-will-be-your-039business-unusual039-strategy-2009/)**(
   8 January 2009)
 * **[What happens when your audience's needs aren't at the centre of your thinking](https://fundraising.co.uk/2010/02/25/what-happens-when-your-audience039s-needs-aren039t-centre-your-thinking/)**(
   25 February 2010)
 * **[The most successful team I've ever been part of](https://fundraising.co.uk/2010/03/02/most-successful-team-i039ve-ever-been-part/)**(
   2 March 2010)

## Comments

### By: Sandre

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/12/24/how-good-your-elevator-pitch/#comment-3459
- Published: 2009-01-05T10:59:22+00:00

A question we ask applicants for funding is “What does success look like?”. Most
people find this the hardest to answer/articulate. Which is a shame. I believe that
anyone with expertise in advertising copywriting will tell you that generally, the
shorter the word limit, the longer it takes to get it absolutely right. But it’s
worth doing.

If you can’t communicate what success looks like, how do you expect us, as funders,
to understand why we should fund you?

As funders, we can only be successful if the organisations we fund are successful–
we’re not doing the delivery, you are. Our outcome isn’t the 30 seconds we spend
writing the check, its the impact of your work on beneficiaries. In short, our outcomes
are YOUR outcomes.

Thought experiments which might help (along similar lines to Kevin’s “if the postman
understands it” example): if a trust agrees funding for three years, what would 
you want them to say as a ‘reference’ to other potential funders? Yes, we do talk
to each other.

What would I (as a grants officer) or my Chair say to a colleague over coffee at
an event – along the lines of “We’ve been funding this fantastic project that …”–
which might add just a little bit of weight to your application that (unknown to
us) is sat in their in-tray?

Sandre
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