Elevator Pitch
My daughter’s friend is in business school. She explained a marketing assignment she’ll soon have: an elevator pitch.
It’s a short, concise, engaging, convincing line that can be used to sell your product in a short period of time. Like, the amount of time you’re in an elevator from one floor to the next. In writing, it’s the pithy, brilliant answer when someone asks “What’s your book about?”
It’s hard! Yes, yes, yes, we’re writers, but novel/memoir writing and marketing writing are two vastly different skill sets, so it’s often much more challenging to come up with an enticing elevator pitch. Often, we succumb to patchy plot points or stilted summaries.
But my daughter’s friend gave me a new strategy—one that is so glaringly obvious, I have to wonder at myself sometimes. 🙂
She’ll have to present her business idea to her professor in an actual elevator. Students must literally ride up a set number of floors with their profs and they have only that small, limited time to sell their product.
What if we tried that as writers? Find a tall building. Ride the elevator. Practice your pitch. I’m not suggesting you snag every elevator rider as your audience, but why not bring a friend? Try a few different lines as you ride up and down? See what fits in the amount of time you literally have in the elevator? Doesn’t it seem like a fun way to tackle a challenging task?
Going up, anyone?