New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

Question

What is an "elevator pitch" and what do I need one for?

Answer

An "elevator pitch" is the short 1 - 2 minute description you would give someone of your company or your value proposition as a succinct overview.  So named after the situation where you get on an elevator with a customer prospect and they turn to you and say "so what do you do?" and you have only two to three "floors" to go before making your case.  Elevator pitches are usually developed for prospective customers and potential investors.

An example customer elevator pitch would be as follows: 

RemotePipes provides outsourced remote access services for companies that have traveling professionals and remote workers that require secure and reliable access to corporate applications and e-mail from a remote location.  RemotePipes is a focused, best-of-breed provider with a carrier-class cost-advantaged network infrastructure and can usually save a company up to 50% in their current remote access costs.  Cargill, for example, saved 60% by switching from AT&T and other providers to RemotePipes, went from one hundred 800 numbers to a single 800 number, increased their rural coverage from 50% to 100% and for the first time gets detailed reports to enable them to charge back to the individual user and department.  The RemotePipes solution can easily be piloted prior to a full rollout and implementation costs are usually less than $5,000 and takes less than 2 days.  Our clients include Cargill, Ecolab, BlueCross BlueShield and Cable & Wireless.