BNET Business Dictionary
Business Definition for: Elevator Pitch
- the practice of pitching business plans to investors in a short space of time
Additional Resources
- The Art of the Elevator Pitch
- An "elevator pitch" is a concise, carefully planned, and well-practiced description about you, your company, or your product/service that your mother should be able to understand in the time it would take to ride up an elevator. Whether you are an entrepreneur with a start-up company trying to find investors,...
- Blog posts 2009-06-23
- Why Your Elevator Pitch Stinks
- Almost every sales organization trains its sales folk to use some kind of "elevator pitch" which is supposed to "hook" a prospect in a few seconds. However, most elevator pitches don't work because: They're way too long, so the prospect loses interest. ...
- Blog posts 2008-12-10
- Marc Andreessen's Perfect Elevator Pitch
- Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, has written the perfect elevator pitch for his recent start-up Ning. He just doesn't know it yet. But Babak Nivi recognizes a punchy pitch when he encounters it. So he combined the salient points from Andreessen's recent writings about Ning to...
- Blog posts 2009-04-03
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 1)
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 1)RE: How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 1)I can't say I'm pleased with either. I agree #1 tries to do too much in a simple pitch. I think #2 misses the mark because I can't picture delivering that to someone...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-05
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 2)
- On Monday, I posted a rewrite of an elevator pitch in "How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt.1)." (Original title, eh?) I then asked you readers to vote on which one you liked best. The result was overwhelmingly in favor of the rewritten...
- Blog posts 2008-08-06
- Not in Sales? You Still Need an Elevator Pitch
- The elevator pitch - the ability to sum up what you're selling in the thirty seconds it takes to travel a few floors - is usually thought to be the province of skilled salespeople and polished job seekers, but if a post by Jodi Glickman Brown on the HBR Conversation...
- Blog posts 2009-10-12
- How's Your Personal Elevator Pitch
- People subconsciously form an impression of you within 10 seconds of meeting. So when they ask you what you do, can you add to that first impression by succinctly, accurately and interestingly describing what you do in an elevator pitch lasting no more than 15 seconds?...
- Blog posts 2009-07-02
- Perfect Time for an Elevator Pitch?!?
- We've been spending this week on elevator pitches, which raises a pertinent question: has anyone ever actually given an elevator pitch... in an elevator? I'm hoping that most people realize that the term "elevator pitch" is symbolic rather than literal. It's symbolic rather than literal. I'm keep...
- Blog posts 2008-12-18
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 3)
- I just checked the comments to the "How to Write an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 1)" and discovered that a reader (named "bnetgeo") posted a comment that contained an elevator pitch that I think is much better than my rewrite. Here it is, with my annotations: ...
- Blog posts 2008-08-06
- Speed up That Elevator Pitch
- We've all heard of an "elevator pitch": a 30- to 60-second sales presentation timed to fit a hypothetical elevator ride with a person you want to influence. Update: Either elevators have gotten faster or attention spans have grown shorter. Whatever the cause, you should count on even...
- Blog posts 2009-07-09
- How to Improve an Elevator Pitch
- This morning in the post "World's Worst Elevator Pitches" I tore apart a couple of very similar elevator pitches. It wouldn't be fair to do that without offering a rewrite, so here goes. Since the two pitches are both for training/consulting firms, we...
- Blog posts 2008-12-12
- Great Elevator Pitch! What Now?
- Over the past week, I've been posting about elevator pitches. Probably the most important part of the elevator pitch is the "call to action" at the end. In most of the elevator pitches that people have sent me, the call to action (if...
- Blog posts 2008-12-17
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 3)
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 3)RE: How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 3)Any suggestions on how to use this approach in cold calling?SAN
- Discussion threads 2008-08-08
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 2)
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 2)RE: How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 2)You are always going to find a certain segment that believes bigger words are better. No amount of arguing, or lack of results, will convince them otherwise.I think they believe it makes them sound educated...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-09
- How to Rewrite an Elevator Pitch (Pt. 1)
- An elevator pitch should be short, emotional, concrete, and all about the prospect. This guy writes elevator pitches which are long, dry, abstract, and all about his firm. by Geoffrey James
- Blog posts 2008-08-04
- Elevator Pitch
- This template helps you develop an "Elevator pitch" - a powerful statement for your target audience that describes you, your company, or your products, boiled down to just 25 to 35 words.
- Tools & templates
- Developing Your Job Search Elevator Pitch
- If you're going about your job search the right way, you're not confining yourself to the Internet. Instead, you use the Internet to get job leads but also venture out into the real world, talk to people, go to networking events, etc. One of the most critical things about effective...
- White papers 2008-01-01
- Going up? MIT to host first ever Elevator Pitch Contest
- CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A panel of venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs will judge MIT's first ever Elevator Pitch Contest on October 13, 2007 at the MIT Stata Center. There is no fee to participate or attend, and the competition is open to both students and the public. More than...
- Research articles 2007-10-05
- 5 Truly Horrible Elevator Pitches
- In the post "Why Your Elevator Pitch Stinks," I explained how a good elevator pitch has to be crisp, pertinent, energetic and focused. Unfortunately, that's advice that tends to fall on deaf ears.  Most elevator pitches are truly awful, even from companies that are otherwise pretty savvy. ...
- Blog posts 2009-02-23
- 5 Truly Adequate Elevator Pitches
- In yesterday's post "5 Truly Horrible Elevator Pitches", I gave some fairly wretched examples of the craft. To round the discussion out, I thought it might be a good idea to give some examples of elevator pitches that, while not spectacular, are at least likely to...
- Blog posts 2009-02-24
