“ So, what do you do?”
A question you must have been faced with several times over the festive season. A standard conversation started and the opportunity to socially prove yourself – or face standing alone in a corner for the majority of the night. As the summer season draws to a close, it is time to start reflecting back on the social events you attended. The strategic approach to introducing yourself – what might otherwise be known as the ‘elevator pitch’ - allowed you to grab a chance to self market. So how did you do?
The ‘elevator pitch’ is a well known yet underutilised tool in the business world. It’s that 1 minute time slot you would get on a chance meeting in an elevator or on the street to make the best impression and hopefully further your prospective business opportunities. However, people often underestimate the benefits of approaching personal networking in the same way.
A typical Kiwi summer will feature a string of social occasions centring around the outdoors and the classic ‘barbie’. Therefore your ‘elevator pitch’ quickly becomes your ‘barbeque pitch’. If you feel as though you bumbled your way through the social occasions, making adequate small talk but not quite allowing yourself to shine, perhaps it is time to start practicing your ‘barbeque pitch’ now in time for the next round of networking opportunities.
Business connections made through informal networks often prove to be more effective than those made through other means. This is because your contact serves as a kind of character reference, an endorsement which makes the meeting more likely to happen, more relaxed and more likely to result in the development of trust.
Here are three ingredients to a great pitch:
1. Introduce yourself in terms of your audience. A person’s frame of reference is set in their own experiences and you are only interesting in the way you affect their world. At a social occasion your audience isn’t necessarily familiar with your field of work so don’t lose yourself in endless jargon.
2. Tell better work stories. Think of a short, sharp story that illustrates what you do, why you do it or what makes it oh so ‘cool’. The key word here is ‘short’. People don’t have endless attention spans. There’s no harm in dropping in the conversation that you were sent to a foreign country on a business trip, but don’t continue on about your day-to-day itinerary.
3. Now, stop talking about you and talk about them. A good conversation involves two people and people want to know that you are interested in them as much as they are interested in you. Ask them a question to get them talking; “So, you’re in real estate, you must see some interesting houses?”
Finally, make sure that barbeque pitch has a little thought behind it. A person is never let down by their ability to make a good first impression and each practice round brings you a little closer to perfection. It’s a small world – you never know when your neighbour’s cousin will become your work colleague, therefore it’s best to always present yourself in the best light possible.
