Practice Makes Perfect

One of the more common mistakes people make with their elevator pitch is not thinking they need to practice it.  Many people assume they’ll be able to do a perfect elevator pitch when they need to.  After all, how hard could it be to talk about yourself for 30 seconds?  It sounds so easy! 

Unfortunately, that sense of ease might work against you.  Some people feel overly confident that they’ll be able to say their pitch flawlessly when the pressure is on without practicing it beforehand.  Stage actors would say that they’re “doing it on the night of”, meaning they won’t practice a certain part of their performance until they do it in front of a live audience.  Within the context of a job search, the problem with “doing it on the night of” is that most people overestimate their ability to speak concisely and coherently under pressure.  Without practice, you risk stuttering incoherently or rambling on forever.

Here are some things to keep in mind when you practice your pitch:

1. As painful as it might be, record yourself.  In today’s tech-crazy world, this can be relatively simple with a smart phone or camera-equipped computer. 
2. Keep it natural.  An elevator pitch should be more “organic” and less “robotic”.  It’s meant to open up a dialogue, and no one wants to talk to a robot (unless it’s Wall*E or something).  When you say your elevator pitch, the listener shouldn’t be aware that you’re reciting anything at all.  This is where those high school acting classes that you took might come in handy!
3. Be mindful of ums and uhhs.  No one will think less of you if you say “um” or “uh” here and there (and truthfully, most people won’t even notice), but if you let out an “um” or an “uh” four times per sentence, you’ll want to dampen that a bit.
4. Our writing style and speaking style are different.  If you wrote the perfect elevator pitch, but you keep stumbling when you say it out loud, or if it feels cumbersome to say, it’s probably due to a difference in writing/speaking styles.  Case in point:  I just used the word “cumbersome”.  That’s a word that I type with relative frequency, but I almost never say it in day-to-day conversation.  A clunky word like that doesn’t belong in my elevator pitch.

There’s no shortage of elevator pitch practice tips (a quick Google search will confirm that), so this list could go on forever.  Start small, and practice a little bit at a time.  If you can nail these four tips, you’ll have a terrific head start!