The Death of the Elevator Pitch
In this solo episode of the Mr. Revenue Show, sales coach Ryan Dohrn declares the "death of the elevator pitch" and advocates replacing it with a customer‑focused Unique Value Statement (UVS). He explains how a UVS should be framed around the prospect’s benefit rather than the seller’s features, and provides a personal example of his own UVS. Dohrn then moves to prospecting email tactics, emphasizing mobile‑first design, compelling subject lines, and a value‑driven first sentence to avoid deletion on smartphones. He outlines built‑in email‑template features in Google Workspace (canned responses) and Outlook (Quick Parts, Templates, Signatures), noting storage limits and practical work‑arounds. Next, he discusses simple, trackable referral programs, illustrating a $500 Amazon‑gift‑card incentive and stressing the importance of paying referrers promptly. A listener question about using AI without sounding artificial is answered with three tips: avoid em‑dashes, keep output concise and human‑like, and train the model on personal email samples or use a "/human" prompt. Finally, Dohrn shares a brain‑work productivity tip: set short time blocks (30‑minute Pomodoro style) with a visible timer to create a "bomb brain" effect that boosts focus. The episode closes with calls to action for listeners to follow on social media, book conference speaking slots, and stay tuned for future tips.
Chapters
Hey friends and fans, welcome to this week's episode of the Mr. Revenue Show. My name is Ryan Dohrn, your billion-dollar sales coach, and let's get started with this week's quick sales tip of the week. Friends, I work all the time with teams on their unique value statements, or we like to call it a UVS. I'd like to declare today the death of the elevator pitch. The death of the elevator pitch is a real thing, friends. Elevator pitches is what we were taught In the '80s and the '90s, early 2000s, you know, you get on an elevator, say on the first floor, and by the 10th floor, the person you're talking with would know a lot about you and your company and kind of what you're all about. It was really designed to be sort of a 30-second, if you will, kind of pitch so that you could walk away and someone would fully understand kind of what you're all about. The problem with an elevator pitch, friends, is in 2026, most people are not terribly receptive to kind of an I-focused conversation. Elevator pitches are all about you, about all about your products, all about your services. It is designed to be informational, but it's not really designed to be value-driven, and that is what a UVS is all about. Now, a lot of you know that I work in the media digital marketing solutions business, so let me give you kind of my UVS, my unique value statement. My goal is simple: to put your brand, to put your name, to put your business in front of people so many times that when they have a need for your product or service, they will turn to you first. They will call you first. They will Google you specifically. They will set all your competition aside because they know and they trust you. That's what we do for you through our marketing solutions. You'll notice that that is a very focused conversation about them. This is the value that we deliver for a particular client. A unique value statement is— this is something that differentiates you from the competition, or it sells to somebody in a very quick way what are the strengths that you bring to the conversation. What is the value they should be able to get from that conversation? So when you think about elevator pitches versus unique value statements, what type of seller do you want to be? Do you want to be a seller that it's all about us, it's all about me, it's all about I, I, I? Or do you want to create a unique value statement and replace your elevator pitch with something that is dripping in value? Here's what we do, and this is how it'll impact your life. Never forget, friends, when you're building a unique value statement, You want to always be asking yourself, what's in it for them? What are they going to get from you? Not what do you do. What is what you do? How does it impact them? How does what you do or what you offer impact their business? Friends, when you can get crystal clear on the value proposition that you bring to your customers, whether you're selling a car, you're selling a home, or you're selling software, you're almost always, friends, going to get further faster. Drop that elevator pitch. It's too much about you. Reframe it and focus in on a UVS, a unique value statement. And friends, I think you're going to have greater success out there selling in sales land. All right, let's move on to our prospecting tip of the week. Friends, a lot of times the device that people are going to see our emails on first is gonna be this device, their cell phone. A lot of times what we do is we design our emails to be received by somebody that's sitting at a computer. We structure the emails around someone seeing it on their computer, and so we miss out that this device is used more for deleting emails than it's actually used for replying to emails. Let me explain. You and I as sales professionals are sitting at our computer and we're waiting for those leads to come in. We're waiting and we wanna sell. Now, if you're waiting, probably you're not following good advice. You should be getting out there and prospecting and not just waiting. But what I mean is we're kind of sitting there, we like to see email come in. Typically, most people, this device is going to buzz first, and this is where you have a moment in time when that email first hits somebody's computer or cell phone. You've got that moment in time where you're like, okay, do I delete this or do I save it for later to look at it in my inbox? I'm going to suggest to you that most people see it here first. So what you need to do is recraft your thought when you're sending emails around what can I do to not be deleted. As a first step, what can I do to not be deleted? This device goes bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz. Your client looks at it. They have to make a decision. Am I going to delete it? Am I going to read it? I'm going to save it for later. So you've got to be asking yourself what is being shown as the subject line and the first line of text. So if the prospecting email you're sending out is like, hi Bob, hi Julie, I hope you're well, that is a dead giveaway that it's a sales email. And more than likely they're gonna do this, swipe and delete. So be asking yourself, what do I do to not be deleted? I believe that you need very, very accurate and inspiring, thought-provoking subject lines. Your first sentence needs to show some value or a competitive option or a competitive analysis opportunity. And then you need to be thinking about what is that going to look like on somebody's phone? Because if you're writing War and Peace or Moby Dick, they're probably not going to be reading it, friends, on their phone. Prospecting, friends, that's where it all begins. So be asking yourself, what can I do to make sure I'm paying attention so the emails I'm sending are being received well on people's cell phones? All right, friends, now it's time for our sales tech Tip of the week. You know, one of the things that is often overlooked inside of your email client are the templates and the places to store your templates. Now, there's all kinds of add-on tools and Chrome extensions that you can use, but primarily most of you are going to be using one of two email services: either Google's G Suite for Business, or you're going to be using Microsoft Outlook 365 or something along those lines. Both of those tool sets have the ability for you to store templates right inside of the email client. Now on G Suite, it's gonna be referred to as your canned responses, and you can have any number of canned responses. You're gonna be able to turn that on inside of your settings in the sprocket in the upper right-hand corner, and you're gonna be able to find those pre-canned templates, and that's where you'll load them. You'll load them inside of the mail client. Email client. Inside of Outlook, you do have a tool called Quick Parts, you have a tool called Templates, and then you have a tool called Signatures, depending on the age of the software that you're using. Now, one of the kind of downfalls, if you will, or I don't know if it's a downfall, but something I don't like about templates inside of Outlook is that you're really limited in how many you can have based on space and storage. So I think you're only going to get about 500 kilobits of information anyway. So you might consider keeping your templates someplace other than your email's outbox or sent box, maybe in a Word file. Or I have some clients that have multiple signatures and they use their signatures as a way to store templates. You can do that as well. Now Quick Parts is also something for when you're trying to put things quickly inside of emails. And you could use that as a tool as well. Now, here's the crazy part. Some of you are like, I didn't even know that existed inside of Outlook. And that's why we have shows and times together like this, so that when you think about sales technology, you're using the template features that are built into your email clients as an effort and a way for you to get further and faster down that sales road. All right, now it's time for your retention Action ideas of the week. Tell me, friends, what is the referral program that you or your company has in place to reward people for referring business to you? Do you make it easy for someone to refer business to you? Do you even ask for referrals at the end of every sales call, whether you win business or you don't win business? An example of a great referral program is a group that I've worked with right now. They give $500 kind of via an Amazon gift card, if you will, to any customer of theirs that refers business that is a closed deal. They offer it and it's very simple to claim. What they do is they have a business card that's printed with sort of their referral rules. They give that business card to their current customers and they say, anytime that you refer business to me, please use the code that's written right there. Send me an email and mention that code. And that's going to allow me to track that, that person, that potential customer. And if we bring them in, I'm going to give you $500 in cash. Now, you do need a budget for this. You do need to pay attention for it. But a lot of times there's not referral programs that actually make sense, or, or the referral program is kind of silly to track, or it's like, we'll give you 10%, or they make it really complicated. Keep it pretty simple, friends. Folks will refer business to you If you give them an incentive to do that, it's not like people aren't nice. I mean, folks are nice people and they're probably going to refer business regardless. But I love bonus and referral programs that are simple to execute, really simple to track. And when you incentivize people to refer business, friends, guess what? They are a lot more likely to refer that business. Now, friends, the biggest piece of this, when you get a referral and it's a tracked referral, Pay attention. Pay attention. Make sure that that lead, if it closes, that that person that referred the business, make sure they get paid. Because there's nothing worse— it's happened to me all— it happens to me regularly. I refer business, I never get paid for that referral. And so because of that, I am less likely to refer business in the future to that particular customer of mine. All right, one of my favorite parts of the show. Let's Listener questions. Keep those questions coming in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. I say it all the time, if we don't answer you back, we didn't get it. We'll either answer it on the show, on YouTube, on the podcast, or I'll send you an email back. We take great pride in that. So if we've not handled that, try again, ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, next listener question comes from Terry up in— over in Bend, Oregon. I've been to Bend. Bend is a nice place. All right, Terry asks, hey, Ryan, longtime listener, first-time caller. I like that, Terry. Ryan, how do I make sure that when I'm using AI, it doesn't look like AI to my clients? Oh, Terry, this is one of my absolute favorite topics to talk about. In case those of you don't know, I'm like an AI in sales kind of guy. I love using AI as a part of my sales process. All right, Terry, so 3 tips for you. All right, one of the first dead giveaways that AI is being used is something called the em dash. An em dash is actually correct grammar, but it's that really long dash that very often in a sentence replaces dot dot dot, or in some cases a comma. It's a long dash and it's technically called an em dash. AI loves to use the em dash. Most humans don't use that long em dash. So one of the things that I have done is I've told ChatGPT, hey, don't use the em dash when you're helping me write emails. Okay, that's kind of a dead giveaway. All right, the second dead giveaway is when the answers you give or the emails you send are too well organized, they're too long, they give too much information, seems academic, seems like it was written by a professional. And if the person knows you, maybe it doesn't even sound like you. So you want to be pretty careful when you're using AI because it's going to be extremely thorough. It's going to contain absolutely no errors typically in terms of grammar and spelling. It's just too much. So a lot of times if someone asks me a detailed question and I use AI to answer it, I'll say, you know, like, hi Brenda, you know, this is a great question. I didn't have the best answer for you, so I used AI to find this for you. I hope it's helpful. Just acknowledge the fact that you used AI to potentially help with that process. Okay, that's the second thing is when your emails are just too long and too thorough and don't sound like you. Okay, now the third thing as it relates to you getting caught related to AI is when it just fundamentally doesn't look human. It looks like the sentences are too long. It just look— it just doesn't look like an email that a human would write. So there's a prompt that you can use, /human, that will help you and yet help the responses sound more human. So Terry, what you wanna do is you would say, for example, in ChatGPT, hey GPT, help me polish up this email, /human. Or you could say /human, make it sound like me. Now, what you could also do besides /human is you could also, Terry, load samples of your emails. So let's just say the last 5 emails that you wrote that sound like you, load those into your favorite large language model, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, whatever you're using, Gemini, Grok, you name it, and say, this is how I normally write. Please make sure that when you're helping me with email responses, that it sounds something similar to me. Also, if ChatGPT or your bot gives you back an answer and you like it, but it doesn't really sound like you, make sure you say, this doesn't sound like me. You have to train the bot to deliver back for you what it is that you really need. So, Terry, I hope that's helpful on that question. We always talk a little bit more about AI here on the show, and we'll keep that topic coming back because I love to talk about it. All right, keep your listener questions coming to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Thanks, Ryan. All right, friends, now it's time for another favorite segment for me. This is Brain Work and your Brain Work quick tip of the week. Friends, one of the things that I like to do as far as keeping my brain on task is I like to set time limits for everything that I'm going to do. Now, the default in most of your calendars is going to be either 30 minutes or an hour, and yet I don't have as much time to give as I used to have to certain things. So a lot of times what I do— and you've heard me talk about the Pomodoro technique before— I'll dedicate just 30 minutes to something, and I spend about 25 minutes working it, and then I've got a few minutes left over to shift, take a break, transition between those tasks. Now, some groups online have reported that you can be as much as 50 to 75% more effective when you set time limits for your tasks. And I think I have no science on this, but I think it's because of what I like to refer to as kind of bomb brain. So what I do is I've got my phone and a timer. I've got my little holder over here, okay, so that I'm going to stick the phone in. I'm then going to go to the app and I'm going to set a time limit for the task that I'm going to do. I'm going to let it sit right there and I'm going to let it run kind of, you know, kind of near me. Now it's a little bit More close to me than it probably would be. So I'll slide it away right over here. Okay. And then as my brain sees that out of the peripheral vision of my eye, it forces my brain to kind of hyperfocus and to think. I call it bomb brain because, you know, like you're watching a movie and you see a timer counting down and you're like, oh gosh, they better defuse that bomb. Well, your brain sees that on your clock and your timer ticking down, and then it forces you to hyperfocus as well. So if you're looking to get more out of your brain, and I always am, friends, I'm looking to put time limits on my time blocks, fully utilizing the Pomodoro Technique, and just really looking at what can I do to be the most efficient in my sales day. All right, friends, and that is our show for the week. I hope you like our new format. Some of you have said it's fast and furious, and that's kind of really how we've Because I know if you're like me, you don't have 60 minutes to sit around and listen to some guy talk about sales. So we're with you each and every week. We've got shorts on the YouTube channel and all the socials as well. So make sure you follow us there. Even if we're not connected on LinkedIn, let's make sure we do that as well. Hey, I've got a few spots still open for sales conferences this fall. I'm pretty full, but I got a few spots open for those of you looking to have someone come into your office, motivate your team that fall. friends, is what I do. So contact me over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, we got more great videos coming up. Stick around for that. More tips on prospecting and closing deals faster. That will be in our next video. Otherwise, God bless you. Get out there and sell something. Make us all proud. And never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy, friends. Well, maybe we're a little crazy. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. We'll see you next week.
