The Only Way To Craft a Perfect Elevator Pitch!

I think it's your opportunity after the perfect intro to tell people a little bit more about the problem you solve, how you solve it, and how it's going to make your customers or your prospect's life better. And if you can do this in less than 30 seconds, then it's the awesome tagline to the headline, the headline being your perfect intro.

So today I'd like to introduce my friend, Summer Felix Mulder. Many of you know her as the founder of the draw shop that makes whiteboard animation videos and most importantly, helps businesses make their message crystal clear. In 2006, Sommer had just got divorced and sold a successful Internet marketing company that she owned with her husband at the time. Before starting the Draw shop just a few years later, Summer continued her copywriting skills from the business she sold and started writing for popular infomercial services and products, which led her to ghostwriting for many New York Times best selling authors. It was this experience that shed some serious light on how people were sharing their content. Many entrepreneurs and businesses were leaving money on the table for one simple reason. People didn't understand what they did and how they would make their customers lives better. It was the mission of the Draw shop to help businesses craft the most important messages and communicate them in a way that was impossible to misunderstand and and would get people to pay attention and take action. Summer and her team work with companies like Uber, Twitter, United Nations, Lockheed Martin, Netflix and more to communicate the most important messages both internally to their teams and to their audiences. Today, Sommer is here to bring back the elevator pitch and show you why it's still important and how to create a kick ass statement that will get people hooked on your offering and how you should use it. Her title is your elevator pitch, a single statement for your business that compels prospects to respond right away. Take it away, Summer.

Thank you. Ok, sharing my screen here. All right, I just have to say really quickly, Dino, that was amazing. Okay, so the last meeting in March, I don't know how many of you were able to see it if you haven't watch it. Clay did a really awesome presentation on YouTube, your perfect intro. And it was about three to four words that you say immediately when somebody asks, what do you do? And he also talked about the elevator pitch and he told the background story about the elevator pitch, which was super cool and fascinating, but he talked about how bad they were and how we should just get rid of them. And I agree that most elevator pitches are pretty terrible, but I also think that we don't need to get rid of it. We just need to reinvent it. And here's why. I think it's your opportunity after the perfect intro, to tell people a little bit more about the problem you solve, how you solve it, and how it's going to make your customers or your prospects life better. And if you can do this in less than 30 seconds, then it's the awesome tagline to the headline, the headline being your perfect intro. So if the goal of these 10 minute talks is to have some insight that has a $250,000 value to it, then I believe that if done correctly, your elevator pitch can actually do multiples of that. So today I want to teach you a super fast, super simple formula that just works when it comes to pitching what you do. I think a lot of us have seen these responses at least once in your life when you're talking about something or somebody asks you, what do you do? And maybe you've even intro'd with the perfect pitch and they want to learn more. And that's where you maybe start to go into a whole bunch of different things and you start to get some blank stares. Or maybe you see them checking their phone and they're like looking for something a little bit more entertaining than what you're saying. Maybe that's the look you're getting. You might even know that feeling yourself when people do that to you and start rambling on about things. And here's the thing, even though what you're sharing might actually be interesting at that moment, people aren't really caring about how long you've been in business, or if it's family owned or not, or how you came up with the idea, or how you and your business partner met, or how great your customer service is. It's not to say that they're not going to care. They just don't care yet. You haven't really earned that level of caring. So at this point, what people really, really care about is the potential for you two to collaborate. So what is it that you're going to offer that's going to make their life better? And selfishly, we want that too when we meet somebody. So when we're at Genius Network, for example, and somebody says, hey, you've really got to meet Sally over here, well, you have hope inside of you. You're like, great, I want to meet Sally. What's the reason behind me meeting Sally? So you're really hoping that Sally's going to offer something to you that's going to be meaningful. So this isn't just about when you meet somebody in person for the first time. It's also about emails that you send or when the person first comes to visit your website. Sometimes your ad is the perfect intro. And then when they land on your website, the elevator pitch of that isn't so strong. So what can we do to make those moments meaningful? Because our time is valuable. So when I was a ghostwriter, my job was to write books that people would stay engaged for the entire book. So essentially what that meant was this page had to make them want to turn to the next page. And it's the same with your elevator pitch. What are they learning that makes them want to raise their hand and learn more? So I want to tell a story about the Draw Shop and how we actually nearly tanked. But before I do that, I want to share some business stats because I think a lot of you know these stats and how hard it is to succeed in business. We're entrepreneurs, we know this. But sometimes you see something again. I think we were talking about this in one of the other talks. You see it again and you're like, wow, why is this? You know, I know these stats, but why? And I just read for the second time. I listened to it, actually. Sabri Sudhi's book Sell like Crazy. And I love this book. I think it has so many great things when it comes to marketing. And he talks about these business stats and how 95% of businesses don't make it to a million dollars in annual sales. And out of those, another 95% won't make it to 5 million in annual sales. 2% of those will make it to 10 million. And less than those will ever make it to over 100 million. That's crazy. That sounds crazy hard, especially if you're just starting out in business. But why is this? So I believe that the reason this is happening, most businesses don't succeed. Maybe some of them are your competition is because they're selling solutions to the wrong problem. They're selling solutions to the external problem. Maybe not the wrong problem, but not the right problem. So I'm going to talk about external versus internal problem in just a minute, but let me go back to tell my story about the Draw Shop. So we started the draw shop over 10 years ago. And when we started, we were one of two companies that were doing whiteboard animation. And it was something that was so different and cool and people really hadn't seen that much of it. And it took off faster than we could keep up with. But it wasn't long Before, a bunch of companies and DIY softwares were popping up all over the place. And suddenly marketing and advertising got really expensive, and it wasn't so easy. So the market became saturated. And now more than ever, our unique value prop needed to stand out. So I had to think fast. So what I did was I went to our customers, the clients that kept returning over and over again, and I wanted to know, why do you keep coming back? And I wanted to learn, what's the real problem that we're solving for you? And it wasn't just a cool hand flying across the screen. It wasn't cool special effects. That stuff was cool. And it was great. Yeah, we had good customer service. All of that was really great. But the real reason they were coming back was because their business was growing faster, because people understood what they did. And if people didn't understand what they did, then they would lose business. It was that simple. We learned that we needed to speak to that. And a special thank you to Joel Weldon, by the way. So excited to see Joel earlier today. He gave me this perfect intro many years ago, and he gave me permission to use it and he helped me prep for a presentation. And we then made at that moment, not knowing it was called the perfect intro. But we, we said that we make your messages impossible to misunderstand. And suddenly people just got it. Oh, I'm intrigued. Tell me more. And once we changed the way we spoke to our prospects, it was like the Phoenix rising. No kidding. I mean, we changed the way that we started our marketing to people, our ads, our emails. And I know one thing, if we had continued to market like our competitors were doing at the time, with cool video and rock bottom prices, we definitely would have tanked. So now that we know the real problem that we were solving and we knew how to solve it, we then started looking at the transformation that our clients were having. And here's what was really cool. People, like product marketing managers of companies were so excited because they were like the hero of their company. They found this solution that got their customers to understand what they did, and in the end, it improved their bottom line, like drastically. So they were feeling so great, they were having this feeling of winning. So we had to really start to speak to that feeling. So now let me go back to the external versus internal. In our case, cool video, need a video was the external problem. The internal problem was we need to make more sales. We need to get people to understand what we do so that we can feel awesome and stand out in our industry. So I'm going to give a quick example here of a turf company. So the external problem a turf company might address is somebody needs turf in their yard. But if I'm that customer that wants turf in my yard, my internal problem is more like I'm embarrassed to have my friends over to my house because my yard looks so bad. The external problem, copy the ad to that problem. Might say, we install turf. Family owned, free quote. Okay? I mean, I might get a quote from them, but if I see something like this, stop worrying about people seeing your ugly yard. Come home to something truly beautiful every day. Two day installation guaranteed. I'm definitely more intrigued. You know my problem that I'm embarrassed. You have a solution that's going to happen within two days. And you've just illustrated that feeling of me getting to come home and feeling happy because my home feels beautiful. The problem, the solution, the transformation. That's what an elevator pitch needs to hit. So let's look at a few not so great elevator pitches. And these are totally made up. But I have a feeling that you've heard these before or you might even be guilty of doing it yourself way long ago. Who knows? But another thing to really think about is your team. Are they saying something like this when they represent your company? So things like, hey, what do you do? Oh, you know, I dabble in a lot of stuff, mostly business. I do all kinds of marketing. So if you need anything, I'm your gal. Or yeah, so we do a little bit of everything at our company. So really we've learned nothing and nothing has been intriguing. And so we definitely want to look at our phone or see who else we can meet. So now let's look at something that could be some good examples. And so what I did is I took some of our favorite genius network members. Even though you're all the favorites, but I just took a few and put together some elevator pitches that might work for them. So let's look at Joel. The problem Joel is solving. Many entrepreneurs struggle to speak on stage with confidence. Solution? I created a powerful marketing framework called the Ultimate Speaking System Transformation. When speakers are prepared, they speak with confidence and are positioned as a powerful leader in their industry. Let's look at Joe. High profile entrepreneurs can feel alone and misunderstood. I've created a safe, collaborative community that brings together the world's brightest industry transformers and leaders so that entrepreneurs can tap into relevant wisdom and strategies to grow their business and experience their best life. Jim, do entrepreneurs want freedom from the complexity and confusion when it comes to keeping their wealth we make wealth management simple and effective so that the entrepreneur can feel taken care of, not have to worry and say yes to life. Nick Sonnenberg Busy entrepreneurs and executives have so many ideas that they never execute on. I created an on demand team of highly skilled vetted professionals that can significantly grow your business and execute on those ideas in as few steps as possible. When entrepreneurs and executives take loads off their plate, they get to enjoy more meaningful time and an optimized life. And then here's the draw shops businesses struggle communicating what they do. We use a proven formula to create content that converts and makes you impossible to misunderstand so that you can engage your audience, attract more customers and stand out as the best in your industry. And of course, because we do what we do, we had to make a cool infographic for it. So these can be used not only in a pitch when you first meet somebody, but these are things you can use on your bios, your social media presentations, webinars. And you might use something different for a webinar. Every service can have a different pitch as long as you're answering those questions. And remember, here's the goal. People become engaged and want to take action, meaning turn the page and learn more when they feel that you understand the pain of their internal problem. Trust that you have the solution to this problem and can see themselves transformed after this problem is solved.

Yeah, that was great. And you know, here's what I've always said Summer, to people with draw shot videos is that one of the reasons to hire you to do a video for them is not so they can just get, you know, the video or the animation. It's the process that they will have to go through and what they will learn about how they communicate. Because you've been instrumental in helping me take ideas and concepts and putting one together, then all of a sudden I go deeper with this thing that might have just been an idea or something that I say. And so you really help clarify and hone in. And in the same way that if someone writes a book, it's not just that they now have a book, it's what the writing the book does for their own thinking. And in the same way that having you do a video, it's what it does for your thinking, it's now something that you can can and clone yourself in the same way that you can and clone a sales letter and you can, these are explainer videos. So they're not just used for selling. If you want to use them for selling, you can use it for your own Internal team. Like if you can see the ways that I have used Draw Shop videos, we're using it for an introduction for housekeeping at the beginning of this virtual event, right? And when we're here live, we play. Here's where the bathrooms are, here's where the drinks are, here's where to go, here's what to do, here's how to use the catch boxes. So I would encourage all of you to go down this path if you've not. I posted in the comments that if you go to Google and type in is 7 selling evil, what you'll see is that there was already a video that existed where someone had asked me when they were filming me for a documentary 10 years ago. And it was B roll footage that was never used. But someone who works for me named JR watched 30 minutes of B roll footage. He watched the person making the documentary ask me this question, is selling evil? And I just responded to it. And it was about a 3 minute and 50 second response. And JR's like, that's actually really interesting what Joe said. And he edited, he just popped. I mean, he's not even a video guy, he's like a young guy, you know, kid at the time that took this three minute, 50 second thing, threw it up on a YouTube channel and then all of a sudden people started sharing it. And then I was like, that's an interesting concept. I wonder what it would be like if we just had you do an animation of it. And so you. I mean, I didn't even need to do anything other than you just took me talking and I was like, wow, there's like a lot that you can do to repurpose content. And so Gary Halbert would always say, capture yourself at concert, pitch and transcribe that. Well, see, the beauty is not only can you do that for other people if they already have existing content, but what happens most of the time is people don't know what the hell to communicate. And they come to you and you help them communicate it, because that's what you are. You guys are copywriters. And so you take confusion and you take what people want to say and you help them do it. And then you add what is so valuable, visual communication to it. It's not just the words, it's not just the voice, it's the visual communication. And so I would highly encourage everyone to do this, to not just get a video, but I can assure you, the thinking that you have to go through and everyone that's that's had you do a video for them or utilize your company. They've made those comments like, she did a great job. You know, that sort of stuff.

So this was awesome, Joe. Today was so, so great.

Thank you. Thank you, Summer. It's great to have you as the end too, because I think this is such an important, important subject. All right, so with Summer, anything else you want, any final word, like, how do people, how do people hire you guys?

Just email me. Yeah, it is really like you were saying, Joe. I think so many people get, when you're in your business so much, you don't see things as clearly. And you really sometimes have to dissect and study who your clients are and go, what is it that you see? You know, or what is it that we're doing for you? And you think, you know, and I think the cool thing is, and I would love to do that with anyone here, is to kind of like go deeper into that and think about what's the real problem. Because for us, it's like right at the beginning process, like you said, with that whole thinking time, people answer certain questions. It's all about the right questions. But that makes them go, oh my gosh, I totally thought we hired you for this type of thing video, but actually we're going to be doing this instead because this is the real thing we need to talk about. It's just interesting how that happens.

Yeah, yeah, let me say this too. And it's about what you invest in because certainly some things cost money. Because I could say, what does it cost to do a draw shot video, right? What does it cost to hire Joe Weldon? What does it cost to hire, you know, Joe Clark or Jim do or John Bowen or whatever? You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of ways that people treat marketing and communication and services like they would a bag of potatoes, you know, like it's a commodity or something. They're going to spend money on something. But I'll tell you, I've never seen effective marketing or training or consultants, if utilized, if selected in the right way, ever cost anybody anything again, if they utilize it. I mean, I've certainly have made. I've spent a lot of money on things I didn't do anything with that were like decisions where I didn't think it through. I mean, I've, you know, I mean, everyone here has pissed away money in some way, shape or form. But I'll tell you, like hiring someone to produce a result. Like you had mentioned Joel Weldon in your presentation, like, for what Joel charges, I would find it almost impossible for someone to not hire him and translate that training into multiples of what it would cost. Or someone hiring you to help them with a video or joining Genius Network and not being able to. To multiply that. Because, as our friend Clay Hebert says, it's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. It's much easier to deal with. It's way easier for me to deal with someone else's marketing problems than my own. So if I came to you and said, summer, I got a problem, which I have, I mean, we're right in the middle of having you do some stuff. I don't know. Like, I have ideas about it. I know what I want to communicate, but I'm so inside the jar. So it's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. And so when I can go to someone else to help them, like, I have ideas on how to speak, but if I go to Joel, who doesn't have a attachment to it, he can look at it from an outsider's view and help me with his process on how to do it. And that's how I want to encourage everyone here who has that unique ability in Genius Network to utilize other Genius Network members to help you with the things that you're so close to that you can't quite figure out on your own. A lot of it won't cost you anything. It's just simply talking to each other and others. They have a process. They have to create stuff. They have a sausage factory. But it's hard to have your own sausage factory. But when you can go to someone else's and give them just what you got and they can pump out something really valuable for you, that's a good investment. And right now, think of the things that if you had this. This communication to this solution and during these times right now, that would be really helpful. What would that be? And if it makes sense to hire Summer or hire Joel, hire anyone that you hear, go and do it. Because I think it would be a smart idea. You know, I see Nick Sonnenberg right here. Like a lot of people that have not been able to get things done, I've been telling people call leverage, you know, in order to do it, because they can handle a lot of stuff right now that, you know, as long as you don't need the physical person there, and as long as it's legal, they can most likely do it for you. So there's. There's a lot of that sort of stuff.

Leverage is so awesome, by the way. I just have to say, they're like my life saver every day.

Leverages.

Oh, yeah. So good. Yeah.

Again, I've. I've been touting and promoting this for the longest time. Not because I'm trying to just refer business to Summer. What I'm really trying to do is to have everyone go through the process, because you will learn more about how to communicate. Because the people that say, man, I don't understand marketing, or I need marketing. I need help with communicating this, or I need a sales letter. It's like, here's one source that can do it for you, and it's not a lot of money, Sam.