I Should Hire You: Elevator Speech Presentation

Preparing Your Elevator Speech An elevator speech is a type of short dialogue that markets you as an individual, sells an idea, or promotes your business, profession, or cause. According to some business professionals, an elevator speech is as necessary as a business card (Fallon, n.d.; King, 2014). Here are some important guidelines: Know your audience. Before writing any part of your elevator speech, investigate your potential (or in this case – assigned) audience. You will be considerably more likely to succeed if your elevator speech is clearly targeted at the individuals you are speaking to. Know yourself. Define who you are and what benefits you will bring to the potential career or profession.

• What are your key strengths? • What adjectives describe you? • What do you want others know about you? • Why are you interested in the company or profession the person you are speaking to represents?

Start an outline. Start an outline of your material using bullet points. You can use the following questions to start your outline:

• Who am I? • What do I offer? • What problem is solved? • What are the main contributions I will/can make? • What should the listener do as a result of hearing this? • What should the listener feel after hearing you speak?

Finalize your speech. Now that you have the outline for 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. To help you do this, follow these guidelines:

• 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 revised material and cut out unnecessary words. • Finalize your speech, making sure it is between 90 and150 words long.

References

Fallon, N. (2014). 10 Tips for a winning elevator pitch. Retrieved from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4034-elevator-pitch-tips.html

King, C. (n.d.). How to craft an effective elevator speech. Retrieved from

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