How to Create a Killer Elevator Speech

Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash The infamous elevator speech. If you own a business or have ever worked in sales, you’re probably already familiar with it. But elevator speeches aren’t just for sales people and entrepreneurs. If you are trying to accomplish anything that requires help from others, you could benefit from an elevator speech. This includes looking for work, trying to raise money or awareness for a cause, dating, or just trying to make new connections.

In fact, practically everyone can use an elevator speech. So let’s take a deeper dive into the concept and then I’ll share some tips.

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Always Be on the Lookout For Success

Always Be on the Lookout For SuccessIf there’s one thing we can learn from our politicians, it’s that you should always be on your best behavior because someone is always watching — especially now since most people carry cell phones that capable of taking still pictures and many can even capture high definition video. To spin that around and look on the bright side, that also means that you have a lot more opportunities than you often realize.

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Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall

Throwing Spaghetti at the WallA while back, I read “How to Sell Anything to AnybodyThrowing Spaghetti at the Wall” by Joe Girard and one concept that stuck in my head was his point about throwing spaghetti at a wall. Joe says “if you throw enough spaghetti against a wall, some of it will stick.” He used this point to describe his philosophy on cold calling — if you call enough people, someone will eventually listen to you. The concept can be used in other areas of business such as sales, pitching ideas and even looking for a job — if you contact enough people, you’ll eventually find someone who is interested in what you have to offer. But wait, there’s more…  Read more... (546 words, 6 images, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

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Can a Book or Audio Program Make You a Better Speaker?

Can a Book or Audio Program Make You a Better Speaker?In my public speaking classes, one of the first things I teach is that you won’t improve your speaking skills unless you get up in front of an audience and speak. I was sharing this story recently at a networking event and a friend said to me “wait a second, don’t you sell CDs and books about speaking?” When I confirmed that I did, he asked then how do I expect anyone to buy them.

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Are you Not Getting the Most Out of Networking Events?

Are you Not Getting the Most Out of Networking Events?If you’re like most people, you probably don’t do a lot of preparation work prior to a networking event. Most people just pick an outfit and grab a stack of business cards, and they are off. For some, this works out adequately for them — they know how to talk to people. But for many, while they have a good time at the event, they don’t see any direct benefits from them.

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How to Really Mess Up a Sales Letter

How to Really Mess Up a Sales LetterI was recently cleaning out some old emails and found a couple of emails from a vendor that got me thinking. Before we get to the actual email, let me tell you the situation. A few years ago, I had downloaded a trial version of a piece of software. Many companies require you to provide some information prior to allowing you to download, so I had provided whatever info they had requested. It’s not uncommon for companies to have someone in their sales group follow up. In this particular case, this vendor was in the same city as me (I’ll refrain from sharing the name of the company or sales person) so a salesman emailed me requesting a meeting.

Here is the email I recieved, with the subject being “[his company name] visit – [my company name]:”  Read more... (868 words, 4 images, estimated 3:28 mins reading time)

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Will Facebook Still be Around in Five Years?

Will Facebook Still be Around in Five Years?A decade is an eternity in the world of technology. A site, service or company on top of the world today may be gone tomorrow. So the big question is the future of the world’s most popular social network – Facebook. Will it be as popular? Will something else be the next big thing? Will it even still be around?

Well, no one really knows for sure what will happen to Facebook or social media in general in the next few years. And with so many factors that could make or break a company, it’s about as easy to predict as it is to predict Barack Obama’s successor. Of course, that doesn’t scare me from taking a good educated guess so I’ll not only look at what might happen to Facebook, but also include some scenarios as to how it could be overtaken as the social media juggernaut. So let’s start with my prediction.  Read more... (1376 words, 4 images, estimated 5:30 mins reading time)

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