Your Personal Elevator Pitch

A good 10s personal introduction is key to making people listen

The one minute pitch, also known as elevator pitch, is a great template for convincing other people to adopt a certain solution. Here is a breakdown:

When you have only a minute to sell an idea, you have only 10s to introduce yourself

As you can see, an elevator pitch assumes you can summarize who you are in ten seconds. To see if you can, stop reading now and think of a problem that you have a solution for. Imagine yourself doing a pitch to a stakeholder in the solution. For that pitch, imagine introducing yourself. You have ten seconds. OK. Do it now.

The first time you try saying who you are in ten second, you will find it hard. People that know me, will agree that I always appear to have that problem myself. A process hat helps nailing down the perfect personal introduction is:

1. Take a pen. Write down who you are and what you do. This is your intro.
2. Use a stopwatch and measure how long it takes to say your intro out loud.