It doesn’t matter if you’re making candy or creating software – if you don’t have a polished elevator pitch, you’re leaving money on the table.
A while ago, I read a fantastic 1 minute sales pitch from Canada.
This cold sales pitch made the salesman $50,000 in under a minute .. that’s how good it was.
I’ll tell you the whole pitch in a bit ..
But first – Here’s what you should never do
I could write about what makes a good pitch and a bad pitch, but I prefer fun videos to do the talking .. so here’s one example of a bad pitch from the movie ‘Tommy Boy’.
“Oh my god, we’re burning alive…”
What a way to kill a sale!
Do you kill your sales like that?
Well, I try to skip killing sales like that. Do you?
This is why it’s so important to craft a good elevator pitch and then practice it every single day.
Here’s how the salesman closed a $50,000 sale in under 60 seconds
Here’s a direct quote from the original article on Forbes:
About a hundred years back, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railway was walking through Montreal’s Windsor Station with his entourage when a man approached.
“Say,” he began confidently, “if I could save the CPR five hundred thousand dollars in two years, would you pay me fifty thousand dollars?”
The President nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I’ve noticed that all your freight cars are painted with the words Canadian Pacific Railway in huge letters. Anyone can see it’s a railway. I’ve done some calculating and I estimate that it costs you about $500,000 in paint and manpower every two years just to paint the useless word railway. All you need is the phrase ‘Canadian Pacific’.”
The man got a check (cheque, in Canada) for $50,000 that day.
Of course the man had to do his prep work before .. he had to calculate the cost of the paint, come up with a good pitch and practice it until it’s fluid and smooth.
The key here is, he did his prep work first.
That’s the most important in making successful sales.
How is your pitch? Want help with it?
Can you do me a favor?
Type your pitch in the comment section on the bottom of the page. We’ll review every last one of your pitches
(click here to go to the comment section and read pitches from others)
I would love it if you made your own pitch in the comments (and hey – you might even get some business from it!)
Want to make your pitch even better?
Founder Institute is hosting a Startup Pitch Bootcamp tonight (Thursday April 9th, 2015) at 18:30, where we’re going to help you with your pitchyou can work on your pitch with everyone else, on the spot.
We’ll dive into:
- What makes a good pitch good
- What to watch out for in pitches
- Example pitches from other founders
- How to get customers standing in lines to buy from you
- .. (ok, so we can’t guarantee the last part – you’ll have to work on that one later 😉 )
So if you’re the type of person that wants to be able to make a $50,000 sale in under a minute then you’ll make sure to show up tonight.
Here’s what you need to do first:
- Confirm your attendance on the Founder Institute website
- Comment below with your current pitch
- Find a friend who has a startup or is thinking about creating a startup and bring him
- Show up 10 minutes early, there are limited seats available
See you there! 🙂
