Beverley Weick, president of Blue Dot Marketing (asi/141743), was in her car when the e-mail announcing the Advantages Elevator Pitch Contest popped up on her Blackberry. Her 11-year-old son Ian saw it and read it to her, then asked what a “prospect” was.
“I told him to imagine someone he really wanted to meet so he could work with them,” Weick says. “For a year, he had tried to e-mail them, call them or meet with them, but they never called him back or returned his e-mails. Then I told him to imagine being in an elevator with this person and asked him, ‘Would you talk to them? And if so, what would you say?’”
Ian thought about it, then said, “I would definitely talk to them, but I would use a different name in case they found out I was the person that was bugging them for a year.”
The Wind-Up
The thought of hiding one’s identity while pitching to a prospect may sound funny, but Yossi Rubinfeld, proprietor of Prominent Promotions (asi/800856), once did just that. He got into an elevator with a businessman wearing a pin that indicated he was a mortgage broker. As the doors closed, Rubinfeld said to the man, “So, which floor are you going to? Fifth? Funny, so am I. I’m looking for a John Smith (there was no such person), a broker, whose name I saw on a block of Post-it notes and decided to discuss a mortgage with him.”
The broker expressed surprise that Rubinfeld had picked the company because of a Post-it pad. He then mused to himself that he should really do something promotional, too.
“Well, my friend does promotional items,” Rubinfeld said, pulling out his own card. “Here’s his business card.”
The broker ended up calling Prominent Promotions, but he never found out Rubinfeld was the guy in the elevator. “He doesn’t know, as I just do the sales,” he says. “Then it’s my secretary who takes over the technical details.”
A lot of industry salespeople told us they like to give a mischievous quip when someone they meet asks what they do. Ruby Bruns uses this provocative statement for her intro: “I am the owner of Professional Concepts Advertising (asi/299987). I help businesses expose themselves.”
She says that the comment usually evokes a smile or a giggle, then a question as to just how she helps businesses “expose themselves.” “After that, I go into my pitch on personalized caps, jackets, shirts, then lower-priced items, give them my business card, and ask for an appointment,” she says.
Richard Jensen, sales rep at Sprout Promotions Inc. (asi/332831), uses a similar approach, responding to “What do you do?” with “I can help you get it on, so you can get your business noticed.” Once the prospect asks what he means, he tells them, “I can get you custom products or apparel with your name on them so you can use them in advertising, marketing, or whatever will help you grow your business. Our tagline is ‘Get your name on.’”
The Fast Ball
Other industry salespeople prefer a direct approach. Juan Carlos Lopez, president of Nema Associates Inc. (asi/282191), uses any of three quick answers to pique the curiosity of a prospect: “I make your brand noticed and permanent in the minds of your potential clients”; “We give you a better chance to get noticed in the market”; or “We make your branding work effectively.”
He says that any of these quick answers earns him a valuable five minutes to expand on his services. The tactic comes in handy at his country club, where he often plays golf as a single so he can meet other golfers. Naturally, he brings along lots of golf-related promo items, and on a recent outing, a partner asked where he’d gotten one.
“I obviously gave him the sample to keep and my card in case he had any future branding needs for his company,” Lopez says. “He was very thankful and, to my surprise, he did call me during the week.”
Not only did Lopez win a golf-related order out of it, when he visited the company, he overheard a sales manager talking about another event and got business related to that, too.
The Slider
One industry pro shared how he found that a baby can make a great sidekick when pitching a new prospect. “Years ago, when my children were cute little babies – as opposed to rotten teenagers – I used them to meet owners of retail stores,” says Kevin Berta, proprietor of Advertising Studio/Ad Café (asi/114433). “Big blue eyes and a little drool on the side of the mouth always lightened the atmosphere and made the introduction and sales pitch a little easier.”
When his son Kyle was two, Berta got access to the owner of a children’s store by charming a staff member with the toddler. “The owner came out and saw Kyle and said, ‘Hello,’ to him first. Kyle smiled and made a big drool bubble. I introduced myself: ‘Hi, my name is Kevin. I was just picking up a couple things for Kyle, and I thought I would introduce myself.’”
Berta went into his elevator pitch and managed to win a new client. “The best thing about this is that Kyle did not know he was being used and did not ask for a cut of the profits from my first sale,” Berta jokes. “Now I have to use small puppies.”
Other salespeople use a promo product as a business card to help explain what they do. Nancy Denker, president of Focus Ink Inc. (asi/195766), says to prospects, “‘We print everything – from walnuts to signs.’ I even carry printed walnuts with my logo on them. This pronouncement usually evokes laughter and inquiries.”
She also has a put-together image of her holding a giant version of the imprinted walnut. “I put it in the corner of a lot of promo pieces, banners, ads and postcards,” she says. “It’s been very effective. I spent years telling people, ‘We print everything,’ but when I started using the walnut spiel, business really took off.”
John Brandt, owner of PAP/BJ Promo by Design (asi/394348), has a poker chip he uses as a business card. This worked well recently when he found himself in line at a bank with a new business owner who was waiting to sign up for an account. “I flipped the chip to them and told them not to gamble with the future of their business,” Brandt says.
When asked for details, he gave his elevator pitch, got an appointment for the next day, and eventually landed a $3,000 order. “Thank God for opening my mouth and wearing my company – a logoed shirt,” he says. He adds that he gets orders like this all the time, due to what he calls his Three-Foot Rule: “Everyone within three feet of me will know who I am and what I do,” he says. “My kids get embarrassed sometimes, but it keeps food on the table.”
Just Wing It
Some of the salespeople we talked to prefer a non-rehearsed approach. “I usually just wing it,” says Jane P. Meade, president of Joseph Price & Associates Inc. (asi/237585). “My husband says I can talk to a stranger on the street and within five minutes know everything about them.”
Not long ago, she had an elevator encounter with a prospect and was easily able to start up a conversation – mainly because the other woman was carrying a large carton of pens from BIC Graphic USA (asi/40480). “I mentioned that I sold BIC pens and other promotional products,” Meade says. “When we got to the lobby, she asked for my business card.”
Jody Ferrer, owner of The Perfect Promotion LLC (asi/293518), also uses a soft approach to promoting her business with new acquaintances. “I don’t bring it up the first thing,” she says. “First, I always ask about them. But I always try to slide it in somehow.”
Sliding it in has worked well for her, considering she gets most of her business from people she meets in everyday life and through referrals. One of her best opportunities came when her son first joined Little League, and she had to drop off a check at the office of the attorney who was coaching.
“While I was there,” she says, “he gave me this really pathetic looking bag of promotional items. I said, ‘Hey, listen, this is what I do for a living. If you need me to supply you with anything, I’d be happy to help you.’”
Besides enlisting her as a sponsor for the team, he provided her with an invaluable contact. “He referred me to the woman in town who runs the Little League,” Ferrer says, “so now I’ve started doing things for other events that she does. She’s running the mayor’s charity ball, and she runs another organization in town, so I’ve started doing things for them.”
A Game Plan
Donald K. Cortez II, sales manager at First Impression Print & Marketing (asi/375262), is an industry veteran who could easily wing a speech, but he still sees the value of a prepared elevator pitch. “It sounds dumb that you have to sit and write it down,” he says, “but I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and it still helped me to formulate, ‘What do I want people to know us for?’ or ‘What are we really about?’”
Even more important, he views a prepared pitch as a tool to make sure his entire staff is on the same page about the company. “That’s a bigger part of it,” he says. “Then there’s some continuity there. If one of our staff members goes to a meeting and ends up introducing themselves, they certainly know where we’re at as a company.”
Jen Zorger is senior associate editor of Advantages.