Jewellery Business: What’s your elevator pitch?
We have a Jewellery Business Bootcamp running at London Jewellery School this week. It is always very interesting to hear about the students’ businesses and their plans. One thing all the tutors encourage the students to think about is being clear on what their business aims are and who their customers are. One way of doing this is coming up with your elevator pitch.
The idea of an elevator pitch is that you should be able to tell a potential customer/investor/retailer about your business in the time it takes to go up in a lift. It is rather like the opening presentations by contestants on Dragons’ Den. But a pitch can be more than just a bid for investment.
It is a great way on focusing down on the essentials of your business:
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- What makes your jewellery different?
- Who are your customers?
If you can encapsulate this into a few sentences, you will be confident about talking about your business whenever the opportunity arises – at a networking event, in a social situation, on the bus…
But you also need to think about a “call to action”. For example if you meet a potential customer, you might say: “Here’s my card with my web address on it, you can see my jewellery in the online gallery.”
In other words, your pitch is complementary to your business card. It helps you get to the point of handing over a card or a flyer (we’ll talk about business cards and flyers in a future post).
But you don’t want to sound like you have learned your pitch by rote. Practice your pitch with a video – just use your phone or a digital camera – so you can tell how you sound and get your key messages ingrained. When you talk to people about your business, don’t aim to repeat the same words each time but rather get the messages out.
Here are a few links to examples of people pitching – some are general pitches about businesses and some are bidding for something particular – to give you some thoughts. You might not like how some of these people pitch but that will also help you find a style you are comfortable with.
1. Students doing elevator pitches http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHbpbGi7keg
2. Jessica Rose, London Jewellery School for female entrepreneur of the year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNpfMjuGAjE
3. Levi Roots on Dragons Den http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQTzLJCUtjk
And if you are feeling good about your pitch, why not share it through the comments below. You might find new customers or partners.