How many times do you have a good idea, which you think will improve the way your part of the organisation works but you find it difficult to make it "fly". The answer is often to develop an elevator pitch. This is the name given to the short summary of your idea to be delivered to the senior manager responsible for saying yes or no.

Why is it called an elevator pitch? Imagine you step into the elevator and find you are sharing it with the senior executive who can either approve or reject your pet project. You need to convince them that it's a good idea before you reach their floor (at LINZ Colin MacDonald is on the 11^th floor), so you have got maybe two minutes! What are you going to say?

There are really only two steps:

First you need to explain the problem - what "pain" are you going to solve or what new opportunity is your idea going to create?  A relevant example might be: we are currently duplicating effort by capturing the same data more than once.

Then you describe your solution, what value is your proposed project going to add to the organisation? So taking the same example - if we create a master database that can be accessed through the web, all users can access the most up to date data and make updates only once.

This sounds simple but it takes time and effort to craft a good elevator pitch. It needs to meet four tests - it must be:

• Easy to understand: you haven't got time for any technical detail, so keep it simple;
• Succinct: senior executives are dealing with so many issues they haven't got as lot of time to focus on any one idea;
• Irrefutable: have you covered the possible objections?
• Clear financial (and social benefits): this requires some preparation - the easiest cases are where another comparable organisation has proven savings already. However, there are many ways to measure benefits, see the presentation "Making the Business Case doesn't have to be difficult" (PDF 334KB).

You should also definitely check out Sean the Bear's YouTube clip on The Elevator Pitch.

Andy Coote

Director
ConsultingWhere