Networking - the 15 second pitch to help your career
When you are job searching, or networking people say you should have a 60 second elevator speech. You have probably come across this before, what would you say to someone if you were with someone in an elevator for a minute. We are meant to launch into this talk at them, telling them what we do, what we seek so we wow them into wanting more.
But does this happen - when you talk at someone are you making a connection? Or are you just launching into a pre-prepared talk regardless of who.
We need to make a connection and we need to show we listen.
I’ve recently come across a web site that helps people create a 15 second pitch, and that is probably a lot easier for someone to listen to and gives you more time to connect.
http://www.15secondpitch.com - it’s described as: 15SecondPitchâ„¢ n. A personal introduction that is concise, compelling and conversational. No elevator required!
I’ve just had a go and it gives the typical prompts – name, occupation, speciality, what you do, why you do it and call to action.
Yes we need a short description of what we do for when we meet people- for job search, and to promote our small business but we also need to connect with people too. Make sure that what you say is not too long and it does engage with the other person.
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October 13th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Thanks for the link to our site!
I totally agree with you!! It is critical to connect with people. I always tell my clients to ask the other person what they do first. Then, when they ask you what you do, you can give the key points of your pitch. Next, you encourage them to continue talking about themselves. Even before I co-founded 15SecondPitch 5 years ago, I realized that people really have a need to be heard. And for a lot of people, they don’t get that at home. If you can explain what you do quickly and concisely and then get back to focusing on the other person, you’ll build great connections every time!