Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook. Hey, evan, you're looking kind of good over there. For 30 episodes old, how about? How do you look? What's going on?

Speaker 2: 0:11

I appreciate that and, Craig, I got to tell you after working with me on 30 episodes of this podcast, you look younger, you look thinner, you seem more energized, so seem to be rubbing off on you.

Speaker 1: 0:23

Yes, and so for everybody to know, this is our first year anniversary of the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed, and today, today, this topic we're going to talk about is continuing the conversation we had a couple episodes ago, when we were talking about the elevator pitch, but we're going to take it from a marketing side.

Speaker 3: 1:17

So hang tight. After the intro, we'll jump right into it, Thank you. Him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, Craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, Evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach, and welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 1: 1:56

I'm Craig Andrews and I have to. Before I introduce my partner in crime, I have to give him credit, and I hate to do this publicly, but I'm going to do it because I am a man of my word. So for several episodes I've been saying that this way is where Evan is, but I finally went back and checked because I thought I was right. But I was absolutely wrong. It's actually this way. So we're clear on that. I know from now on you're that way, not that way. Okay, so we're clear on that. I know from now on you're that way, not that way.

Speaker 2: 2:26

I only took a year for you to trust me in terms of not lying to you about something as simple as that.

Speaker 1: 2:31

I know, but I swore I swore it was, but anyway, I'm excited. Welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews, that's Evan Poland, my partner in crime, and today's episode we're going to talk about the elevator pitch, part two.

Speaker 1: 2:46

This is going to be a three-part series, but this time we're going to focus a lot on how this elevator pitch affects marketing, and the thing that's interesting about it is is that most people don't understand and what I like to tell clients when I'm talking to them is the devil had a lie and they told them a lie that the ultimate thing is that social media can work on its own, Websites can work on its own Content, marketing email can work on its own. If I just do those things, my business will improve. And that's a lie. The reality behind it it comes in and works together in an integrative approach. Now the catch behind that is and this is how simple and how powerful the elevator pitch is, and I'll have Evan go into it in a second the elevator pitch is the most streamlined part of that whole integration that people need to understand. Before I go into more detail, Evan, explain to them from a sales perspective how you see an elevator pitch, or how is the elements of an elevator pitch?

Speaker 2: 3:47

elements of an elevator pitch. Sure, so before I explain the elements of an elevator pitch story, I was just on a call with a prospective client earlier today and let me tell you, let me give you an example of what happens when you don't have a really good elevator pitch. I was talking to a young guy in his early twenties and he was telling me about all of the outreach he was doing. And he's with a flooring company, um was doing outreach, and he's like, yeah, no, I'm getting like a couple percent response. Yeah, I'm not sure. I said great, you know, tell me a little bit about what you're putting in your email, what you're putting out there. He's like, well, I'm reaching out, you know. I'm telling him you know the my name. I'm telling him the name of my company. I'm telling him that I'm a newer salesperson with the company. I'm telling him that you know that, that this is what we do and that we work with a lot of people like him and that, you know, I really like to come in and meet with you know, whoever the prospect was.

Speaker 2: 4:41

I said to him hey, that's awesome, by the way, and I and I I apologize in advance, I hope you're not insulted how is that any different than if one of your competitors were to send him an email? He's like what do you mean? I was like well, if you say your name, what you do, that you've worked with, I said if you were with a company, would it look any different with a different company? He's like oh, I guess not Crickets. I was like so what's the compelling reason why anybody would respond if you sent out a message like that? He's like oh, I don't know, I guess I was just trying to introduce myself. Right, if you want to work really, really, really, really hard and do lots and lots and lots and lots of activity with very little in the way of results, yep, do it that way.

Speaker 2: 5:38

Um, working with my clients, I have them approach the elevator pitch a little bit different. I need to with somebody who I don't know, who doesn't know me. I need to grab them right away. And, craig, question for you before I go into this A salesperson, somebody you don't know at all, how long do they have to grab your attention before you're like next, and you just ignore the call, ignore the call, ignore the email and just go on to the next thing you might have 10 seconds, you might craig's a really nice guy.

Speaker 2: 6:12

Uh, yeah, you might have 10 seconds.

Speaker 2: 6:14

Other people would give you less, yeah, so I need to give somebody a compelling reason why they want to listen a little bit longer yep and I need to look sound, feel different from my competition right from the beginning, Otherwise, why would anybody pay attention to anything that I have to say? So for me, a couple elements of my elevator pitch. First and this is going to go against what a lot of people were told I want to be as informal as possible. I'm just using my first name. I'm not using first and last name. I'm not using title. I am trying to be as conversational as possible. So, yeah, I'm giving my name, giving the name of my firm, the name of my company, just a quick two to three word descriptor of what we do. And then I am focusing on the problems that I solve. What most people do and I think we touched on this a little bit last week is they get a verbal brochure in their elevator pitch.

Speaker 2: 7:22

Let me tell you all about me. Let me list out all of our products. Let me tell you all about me. Let me list out all of our products. Let me list out all of our services. Let me list out my years of expertise and how long I've been doing what I'm doing. Dirty little secret, Nobody cares. Nobody cares. If they can't quickly identify something that you can help them with. Mentally, they're on to the next thing and anything else that you say doesn't really matter. So I need to focus in one or two or three bullet points. What kinds of problems do I solve for my clients? How can I make them money or save them money? How can I save them time? How can I decrease their liability? But what is something that's going to be tangible and what problems can I solve? So for me, in my coaching and consulting practice, I'm focusing on hey, we help attorneys who were frustrated because they're just not getting in front of enough of the right opportunities, or they're upset because it takes way too long from first contact to turning somebody into a client, or they've been in business for a long time, have a great reputation and just aren't getting the number of referrals and introductions they know they should be getting. Not talking about how I do it or what I say. I'm talking about the problems that I know my prospects run into, and if somebody has one of those, they'll raise their hand and they'll say wait, Evan, tell me a little bit more. How do you do X, Y and Z? Now I am in.

Speaker 2: 8:57

This elevator pitch is a conversation starter. It's not a deal closer or they're going to go. You know what my biggest problem is? I can't find enough people to do the work, but I've got more than enough business. Great, I can disqualify very quickly and move on to the next, but when I give a verbal brochure, I'm not going to get that feedback.

Speaker 2: 9:17

And then the last element and I'll review the elements again finish with an open-ended question. Craig, what are the biggest challenges you're running into? What's the biggest issue you've seen when it comes to XYZ? But I want to make sure that I'm focusing on the problems that I solve, asking an open-ended question to get a response, and even if I'm doing the elevator pitch over email, I'm leaving the email with the hey, what are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest problems? What should we be talking about? So force a conversation rather than just ending it or just having a yes, no question at the end. So again very quickly my name, my company or firm name, two or three word descriptor about what we do, two or three very quick bullet points about the problems that we solve in terms of what can make or save people money, save them time, decrease their liability, and then open-ended question to find out what kind of challenges the other person is running into, and this is a conversation starter, not a deal closer into and this is a conversation starter, not a deal closer Beautiful.

Speaker 1: 10:28

So, with everything that Evan just told you guys there and our beautiful audience, what I want you to understand, from a marketing perspective, how this works is that becomes our metronome for everything that we would do.

Speaker 1: 10:38

I mentioned earlier in terms of how all the marketing services are. Integrated approach has an integrated approach to it, so you have to be able to take that same message, which has already been simplified for the process that Evan has explained, and now apply it to website, email, social media, any type of correspondence that goes back. And, by the way, the value of having a great elevator pitch in marketing is that each representative that you might have out there, whether it be the head of the organization or the brand new salesperson, who are using the same elevator pitch, does phenomenal things for when you're out there prospecting, and so, from our scope, one of the things that we're trying to do is we're trying to open up that window and get a little bit more flow in so that somebody like Evan and this team can come through and really attack their appropriate leads, not just anybody who just happened to see anything.

Speaker 2: 11:38

I want to give a great example. Question for you Is consistency important with marketing?

Speaker 1: 11:45

consistency is everything in marketing it is everything.

Speaker 2: 11:48

So just just to piggyback on that real so if a firm has six or eight different attorneys, five or six different salespeople and every message sounds different and it seems like people are with like five different firms because five different people are giving eight different messages. Yeah, what is it? How does that impact the marketing for a company?

Speaker 1: 12:11

It impacts tremendously. It's like that they talk to six to eight different companies when they're really should have been talking to one. The messages in terms of what they offer is convoluted in terms of wait, this guy said. The head of the organization, for example, might have said that you do X as a service, but you're saying you do Y. That doesn't make sense, so what are they going to believe? And a lot of the stuff in terms of marketing. Why consistency is so important is because we're talking about that famous T word of trust within this elevator pitch information. I have to be able to trust what you're telling me and if I don't feel the trust among the organization whether it be in your branding, whether it be in your website or wherever I might have researched you prior there's a greater chance that I'm going to say there's something wrong here. I don't know what it is, but it's easier to go to the one who has the trust, even if they're not as good of a service provider as you are, and that's the value of the elevator pitch here.

Speaker 2: 13:08

And there are all kinds of studies that show it takes about seven seconds for somebody to make a first impression. So if you're off base, it's not going to take very long for people to tune out, for people to assume that you've got no credibility, that you don't know what you're talking about. So that consistency is key. For those of you who are selling services rather than products, having that credibility is key and that's not going to happen if you can't articulate how you can help your clients and if multiple people from your company or firm are giving different messages. That's going to kill your credibility.

Speaker 1: 13:46

Absolutely so. Here's another way from a marketing perspective perspective. Goodness that marketing can help you One. When you sit back and you look at, maybe, the content that you might be producing for your blogs, the elevator pitch gives you your guide in terms of what you should be talking about. If, in Evan's example, when you're talking about the problems that I solve, that one problem you solve could branch out to be 15 different pieces of articles that now become 15 or 30 videos, which now can become 60 different social media posts, and that's the advantage of everything linking back to the importance of that elevator pitch, because, at the end of the day, what's the one thing you do after you put out all this marketing? You go right back to talking to the potentially the business development person who should be giving that same pitch, who took that convoluted message that they read somewhere and you've now summarized it for them. Now the light bulb goes off and, from a sense, that's how marketing is going to work for you.

Speaker 2: 14:48

So, and for those of you that are doing a lot of customized marketing, the elevator pitch is not a one size fits all. So if you have several different client avatars, you shouldn't be using the same elevator pitch for a really large client versus a really small client. If sometimes you're targeting the business owner and other times you're targeting other kinds of people in the organization, they may care about different things. So you should be having different elevator pitches based on who within the organization you're speaking with, so it can be hyper-focused and hyper-personalized to that specific audience.

Speaker 1: 15:29

And what I'll say to piggyback on that, evan, is the thing that we've said repeatedly over this year of doing the podcast, at least from my perspective, is data, data, data and, just as a little side note, we're going to have a guest on here soon who talks about data in a way that's going to that should blow your mind. That's how important data has become and, from the perspective of the different avatars that you're referencing, the work that you need to do for them makes your back end work so much easier, especially when you start with an elevator pitch that can be consistent. Just because you're talking to the CEO does not mean your elevator pitch has to be dramatically different. It just needs to talk about the problems that the CEO might have compared to the business development person, and that's the importance of working with consultants like Evan and myself who can sit back and go wait a minute, I'm sorry, hold on one second. That makes no sense. We're not afraid to step to you guys and say it's all right, that makes no sense, right, and then that type of pushback is important.

Speaker 1: 16:29

Evan, let me ask you real quick the clients that you might have who were in a position that I've done it before. I've done it this way before. How does that usually work out for them?

Speaker 2: 16:39

So and that's my favorite question to ask is we've always done it this way. It's like great, help me out. I'm a little confused, I'm a little slow. Why are we talking? And usually it's well, we want to get better results. I'm like okay, so, and craig you know this is one of my favorite, you know sayings say geez, you know, help me out. Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Most of the people I come across know it really well. They're like yeah, now it's doing the same thing over and over again and, you know, expecting a different result. I said, okay, so if you're currently doing it this way, and this is the way that you've always done it, yeah, and you're not a hundred percent satisfied with the results that you're getting, why, again, do you want to keep doing it this way and why aren't you open to doing something a little bit different?

Speaker 2: 17:28

yep about half the time the light bulb goes off over their head and they go oh, okay, and then they're open. The other half of the time I bang my head against the wall three times and then move on to the next person because not everybody's going to get it and that's okay. In other episodes we've talked about qualifying and disqualifying. That's a point where I may walk away. If someone's just not listening to what they're saying. They're telling me that they're not getting the results, but they're not willing to change. I can't help that person. Probably you can't help that person.

Speaker 1: 18:03

That person's probably going to have to have a lot more in terms of tough times before they're willing to make a change in terms of tough times before they're willing to make a change, and I think that's one of the things that we're seeing in this new year is. I find this year has been a stellar year for us because more people are open to it. You know there's systems out there from a marketing perspective that they just don't understand, but they know they need to understand it. Now. There's ways of doing things simpler. We've also had an episode where we talked about AI. There's ways of doing things simpler. We've also had an episode where we talked about AI. So now it's kind of like our review of the year of our 30 episodes.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Ai is coming people, whether you know it or not. So if you're not in a position where your elevator pitch which is theoretically our guide in terms of how we can keep things simple we can always put simple into AI and have it explode into information. But if you explode it with information in terms of AI, it's going to explode even bigger and now it's really confusing. So the elevator pitch is incredibly important and it's something that I do from a marketing consultation with clients Evan does from a sales perspective for clients to make sure that when you go out to people, whether it be a marketing or sales side. It's very clear what you offer, and Evan and I were fortunate to work with a lot of clients together and we were able to consult back and forth with clients, to sit back and go. Does this make sense to you, evan? Nope, don't make sense to me either. Okay, let's go back and let's refine this and make it make sense.

Speaker 1: 19:27

The one quick point the biggest problems that I've seen clients have is that they don't know how to simplify the most simple of messages, and that's where the biggest issue comes into play. So if I go to produce a video and you're telling me about 300 other things, I'm going to go. Video has one purpose. Most people have a very short attention span. Let's create that elevator pitch. Keep it simple. Let's go there. Then we'll create another video that keeps it simple for that other audience. And now you have a library so that anytime you repeat the clients that you might run into, like a CEO or a business development person or a marketing person, whoever it might be you have a library of information that you can give them already from the door. Would you find that to be helpful for you if you were going out talking to people who might need information?

Speaker 2: 20:18

Absolutely. Most of us see. These days people have a shorter and shorter attention span. If it gets too complex, I'm out. So keeping that message short, sweet to the point and, craig, along the lines of what you're speaking, the other challenge I see people run into with their elevator pitches is we are in our own head so much and we are living in our own world that we spit out jargon and only we understand. Or we're talking about our prospects' challenges, but we're using our language, talking about it through our lens, so when the prospect hears it, they don't understand, they don't see where it applies to them. So the other thing we often need to do is kind of take a step back, walk in our prospect's shoes a little bit, think about, okay, how would they describe the problem, what are they seeing, what are they experiencing, and then explain it in the way that they're experiencing it. Otherwise it's going to go right over their head and they're not going to get it and we're going to lose out in that first 10 seconds or so.

Speaker 1: 21:23

And even though my wife jumps on me all the time and I know you know her, so you know what she says I said talk to me like I'm in middle school, because what you're saying makes no sense. Break it down simple. I'm not too shameful to sit back and go. You're not clear to me, right?

Speaker 2: 21:37

Sometimes I get in trouble for that and I worked with some really really smart people and really really smart clients and they'll tell me what they do and I'm like I have no idea what you just said, what language that was in. Let's dumb it down. And if you can dumb it down enough so that I can understand it, then we know anybody will be able to understand it and then we'll know that we've got the right pitch going.

Speaker 1: 22:02

That's absolutely right. And there again is the importance of a simplified elevator pitch that allows your clients to instantly understand it, because, despite the fact that it might give you 10, evan might give you four.

Speaker 2: 22:17

And a tip I would give to anybody listening to this podcast give your elevator pitch to somebody outside your company, outside your industry. Ask them if they can understand what you do based on your elevator pitch. If they're like I've got no idea what you're talking about, then you need to go back to the drawing board. Simplify it a little bit more. Talk about it again in terms from your client's perspective. Otherwise, you're not going to get anywhere with that pitch.

Speaker 1: 22:45

Awesome Evan. I love this episode, Let me tell you. And happy anniversary, by the way.

Speaker 2: 22:50

Happy anniversary. After 30, another 30 episodes or so we'll have this down pretty good.

Speaker 1: 23:01

I think so we might keep working. Keep trying. Let me tease you guys. Let Evan and I tease you guys. This show has really taken off for us and we have some great guests coming up. We have a gentleman who has this amazing analytical software, who's in a position where a lot of us in the marketing space advertising space always have to justify to our clients in terms of you know, is this marketing really working? He has created software that will absolutely break down to the minutia of measurements how your advertising is working. So I'm excited to talk to him with Evan.

Speaker 2: 23:34

Who else do we have? We've got a LinkedIn expert coming up who's going to really kind of do a deep dive into how to utilize LinkedIn a little bit more effectively, to get more out of it and really put that piece of the puzzle into place. We're going to have a coach who really focuses on helping organizations to really scale up and to really take off. So we've got a number of different coaches and different industries coming in that'll kind of complement what Craig and I are talking to you about to really help you grow and scale your business and to help you make 2025 your best year in business.

Speaker 1: 24:08

And if I haven't said it before, I'm going to say it again on our year anniversary this is the Sales and Marketing Playbook. We are here to give you the answers. Whether you decide to run the play or not not my problem I'm telling you, evan and I are giving you direct answers so that you can go out there and you can succeed. Now, if you like the information that we've been telling you here, please by all means subscribe, follow, like comment. We're really pushing on LinkedIn. We're really pushing on YouTube. We've grown our viewership tremendously and this is awesome. I'm excited for it. And so let me say this If you're interested in being a guest, or if you're interested in giving us feedback, we're here for it, bring. Or if you're interested in giving us feedback, we're here for it, bring it. We're feeling good. We're from Philadelphia. We got the Eagles championship. We're not afraid of you. Now, okay, bring us the information, ask us questions. We're all for it. Evan. You have anything to give them before we go.

Speaker 2: 25:05

I guess if we're trying to promote the podcast, we shouldn't say nobody likes us and we don't care.

Speaker 1: 25:11

We can say that on this one. We can say that on this one. Well, listen, I'm Craig Andrews.

Speaker 3: 25:19

That is Evan Polin, and we got it, guys, you got it.

Speaker 1: 25:23

I learn quick right, and we will talk to you guys next time. Bye, bye now, bye, and we will talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye now.

Speaker 3: 25:34

Bye. Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed on all major podcast platforms, and follow us on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.