Difference between an Elevator Pitch and an Elevator Story

When giving networking training courses to sales teams I always include the Elevator Story. Many times I get the remark: “We already have an Elevator Pitch or Sales Pitch”. I always explain them that there is a difference between them.

For the people who have never heard of an Elevator Story or Elevator Pitch: this is the answer to the question “What do you do?” And then you have a very short time span to tell something about yourself, your company or your products/services. The name comes from the short time span you have when you enter an elevator at ground level and leave it at the fifth level for example.

For me there is a huge difference between an Elevator Story and an Elevator Pitch. You can use the Elevator Pitch when you talk to a potential customer to get his attention so he will invite you to tell him more about your offer. Or you can use the Elevator Pitch to move to the next step in the sales process.

An Elevator Story on the other hand, can be told to anyone you meet. Even to people who might never become a customer of yours. Why is is so important to have a good Elevator Story? Because the real power of networking is in the second degree.

This means that your contacts (=first degree) should be able to tell your Elevator Story to their network. There are many more opportunities in the network of your network.

By the way, an Elevator Story is for everybody, not only for sales people. Many of our training courses are for non-sales people. They also need to think about their Elevator Stories to be able to advance their carreer, get help for a task or to be chosen for the next project.

So what’s your Elevator Story?

Have a great networking day !

Jan