Networking Tips to Help You Grow Your Business
Preparing Your Elevator Speech
An elevator speech is as essential as a business card. You need to be able to say who you are, what you do, what you are interested in doing and how you can be a resource to your listeners. The goal of your speech should be to start a conversation and get permission to continue it. Your best prospects are people who have a clear idea that something is wrong or can be improved in their business. And you have about 30 seconds to show them that you can address their “problem”.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE- Before writing any part of your elevator speech, research your audience. You will be much more likely to succeed if your elevator speech is clearly targeted at the individuals you are speaking to. Having a ʹgenericʹ elevator pitch is almost certain to fail.
KNOW YOURSELF - You need to define precisely what you are offering, what problems you can solve and what benefits you bring to a prospective contact.
Answer the following questions:
- What are your key strengths?
- What adjectives come to mind to describe you?
- What is it you are trying to ʹsellʹ or let others know about you?
- Why are you interested in the company or industry the person represents?
OUTLINE YOUR TALK - start an outline of your material using the following bullet points.
- Who am I?
- What do I offer?
- What problem is solved?
- What are the main contributions I can make?
- What should the listener do as a result of hearing this?
FINALIZE YOUR SPEECH - Now that you have your outline of your material, you can finalize the speech. The key to doing this is to expand on the notes you made by writing out each section in full.
- Take each note you made and write a sentence about it.
- Take each of the sentences and connect them together with additional phrases to make them flow.
- Go through what you have written and change any long words or jargon into everyday language.
- Go back through the re-written material and cut out unnecessary words.
- Finalize your speech by making sure it is no more than 90 words long
5 Ways to help people remember you
No matter how many networking events you attend – and you know that networking happens whenever there are more than 2 business people in a room – there’s always more to learn. Thank you to Scott Allen for his tips on how to get people to remember you – long after you’ve given them your business card and shaken their hand. Briefly, here are his “five ways to help people remember you”.
1. Be distinctive.
2. Be fully present.
3. Ask thought-provoking questions.
4. Reinforce your keywords.
5. Contribute to the group conversation.
Do yourself and your business a favor and read the entire article. You can find it at http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/businessnetworking/a/memorable.htm.
Practice them so you can use them at the Regional Networking with the Garfield Hts. Chamber on Nov. 18!
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