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I've shared my sense of serendipity succession on this blog before -- see the category family business -- so I'm very happy to see Sabrina's view of that in How our Succession Strategy Worked on the bplans.blog yesterday.
I feel like it completes the picture. Like Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story."
This last part depends on who you are, where you are, and what you want. If you've personalized in the first part, sold yourself and/or your organization in the second, and established the attractiveness or suitability of the business offering in the third, it's time to finish strong with a closing.
Your closing depends completely on context. What do you want from the person or people you're talking to? The classic elevator speech context is a venture competition or when looking for investors. But there's also the true elevator speech for the established company, simply describing your company to somebody who asked, with no real close. Be honest, you're not always asking for an order, even when you're just chatting with the person in the next seat on the plane. If you are trying to sell then do ask for the order. Seriously: "if you give me a card, I'll send you a copy with an invoice." Seriously: ask for the order. "If you don't like it, send it back. Here's my card."
For the venture competition or investment variety elevator speech, don't try to convey too much information. Do establish in general terms where you are or what you want. "We're looking for seed money of half a million dollars." Or "We're now raising round-two financing of three million dollars to be used for the mainstream marketing launch." Or "we're looking for serious marketing partners able to put money up front in return for privileged first-year pricing." Or "we're trying to establish a royalty relationship with an appropriate manufacturer." And then, ask for a business card, and give one. "If you know anybody who might fit that bill, feel free to recommend us." Or "please give me a call." Don't offer to send a business plan, and don't ask directly when it's about investment; reduce the awkwardness by suggesting that your audience might know somebody, not that your audience might invest.
Don't talk terms in the elevator speech. Just establish what you want or need.
If you're in a real elevator with a real potential investor, you probably soft pedal: "if you know anybody who might be interested, please pass this along. Or maybe you want a business card and permission to send a follow-up email."
And if you're doing an elevator speech in a business venture competition -- close with an appropriate call for investment. Venture competitions are always keying on the would-be or hypothetical pitch to the investor, so make it clear. The better ones end up with something relatively definitive like a reference to seed capital or first-round equity investment. Stay general. Make them want more.
People around Palo Alto Software are laughing (with me, not at me, I hope) today because I've never been particularly good at hair management, and in this SBTV video the I-forgot-a-comb style ends up looking like a toupee. I promise, it's thinning hair, but it's not a rug. Not even a comb-over, just what happens when you try to look combed when you usually aren't.
I was answering questions about bootstrapping and family business and mistakes I'd made. If you watch carefully you might see that I was particularly unprepared for the question about mistakes.
Time flies. I was on the Small Business Advocate show again today and Jim said it was the tenth anniversary of my first guest appearance (can you call it appearance when it's radio?) on his show. I'm always happy to share the microphone with Jim, he's been doing a good job for a long time. This morning's talk focused on my new Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan approach.
Now explain what that person you're selling to gets. Or the organization. You've personalized the need or want, identified your unique qualities to solve the problem, and now you have to put the need or want in concrete terms that anybody can see. For example:
For a Trunk Club member, when his wife says it's time or a new trip or new activity is coming up, or the mood strikes him, he just grabs the phone and calls his Trunk Club counselor. "I need more casual stuff for the golf course, or cargo pants for hiking, or two more slack and sports coat combinations." She knows his size, knows what he likes, what his wife likes, and what he needs. The new clothes come three days later, with a complete money-back guarantee if he or his wife or partner don't like them.
Business Plan Pro lets Jane jump into and out of her business plan at a moment's notice whenever she wants. She can start with the core strategy and build it in blocks, planning while she goes, refining projections as needed. It's built around a solid error-checked, financially and mathematically correct financial model, and a generalized set of suggestions for outlines, but is also completely flexible for adding and deleting topics and creating a unique business plan. Each task, whether topic or table, comes with easy to understand instructions and useful examples.
EmailCenter Pro lets a team share an email address like sales@ or info@ efficiently. Emails can be assigned to team members or not, and answered emails are processed and visible, and unanswered emails remain at the top until answered. Furthermore, it manages collections of snippets or text templates to build on standard but flexibly customizable answers to frequently asked questions.
In each example here, following on the ones in my previous two posts, we should be able to see clearly how this meets the need or solves the problem. Forget features as much as possible, and illustrate benefits. You've already described the person with the situation, and built up your being able to solve it, so now it's just about the solution. Stay focused and concentrated. People will get one or at the most two unique attributes of your business offering. Don't confuse them with more.
David Miller at Campus Entrepreneurship has a very interesting post today about the Acton MBA founded by some University of Texas professors and entrepreneurs. Sounds like an innovative MBA program. That's at THE MBA for Entrepreneurs? — Acton.
In the next part of your elevator speech address 'why you'? Why your business? What's special about you that makes your offering or solution interesting to the target person or organization you just identified. That was my previous post.
This is where you bring in your background, your core competence, your track record, your management team, or whatever. For example:
The Trunk Club invented the best-possible solution to this problem. Founder Joanna Van Vleck first succeeded in sales at Nordstrom's and then took her personalized shopping-for-other style into a hugely successful first market in Bend, OR. Now, having proven the idea on the front lines ...
Palo Alto Software has dedicated itself to business planning for more than 20 years. Its founder is one of the best-known experts in the field. Its current management team grew up with business planning, in the trenches. The 8-person development team has more than 50 person years in the same focused area.
Palo Alto Software has been managing this email problem internally for more than 10 years now, and has been working with its own in-house solution for nine years. It has a very strong relationship with hundreds of thousands of small but growing businesses.
What we focus on here is core competence and differentiation. And, in the classic elevator speech, you have to say it fast. You make your point quickly and go on.
Make sure your point is the right point: benefits to the target customer. It's not what's great about you, but rather, what about you lends credibility to your ability to meet the need and solve the problem.
I've included two different paragraphs for the same company on purpose. See how the unique qualifications differ for different contexts. It's the same company, but in the second example it's relating its speech to Business Plan Pro, the flagship product. In the third example it's building up EmailCenter Pro, the new product. The descriptions have to change for each.
You might also think of this as the classic "what do you bring to the party?" question. It's not just your brilliance or good looks or great track record, it's fostering credibility for solving the problem.
Its members grab the phone and call. "I need more casual stuff for the golf course, or cargo pants for hiking, or two more slack and sports coat combinations."
In Part 1, my last post, I recommended personalizing your target by giving it a name, a personality, and a readily identifiable want or need.
Change the world. That's what we said in the 60s. Now we read about today's Generation Y as impatient and entrepreneurial, much less involved in politics than one writer or another would like. No marches on Selma. But there's more than one way to change the world (that is, if anybody actually does). For some real stories along those lines, read Nicholas Kristof's The Age of Ambition in yesterday's New York Times.
With the American presidential campaign in full swing, the obvious way to change the world might seem to be through politics.
But growing numbers of young people are leaping into the fray and doing the job themselves. These are the social entrepreneurs, the 21st-century answer to the student protesters of the 1960s, and they are some of the most interesting people here at the World Economic Forum (not only because they’re half the age of everyone else).
It's a reminder, generations don't fit into generalizations. That's X, Y, or whatever, and including us baby boomers too. You do things one effort at a time, one person at a time, not as a generation. Sorry; that's obvious. He tells several real stories. It's good reading.
For more on that, or another angle, try Quiet? Maybe. Complacent? Never. From the Huffington Post a couple of months ago, written by a 20-year-old college student:
Our generation is trying to change the world for the better; we have just learned that one way works better than others. In part it is our baby boomer parents' fault (if it is a fault at all). More than other generations, we have learned that arguing with our parents works better than a full rebellion. A USA Today article says "Generation Y is much less likely to respond to the traditional command-and-control type of management." "They've grown up questioning their parents, and now they're questioning their employers." As teenagers when we wanted to go out to a party we learned it was more effective to have an "open discussion" (ex-hippie parents like that phrase) instead of sneaking out the window. So we have learned to go through the establishment instead of protesting it. The authority we encounter on a daily basis seems much less authoritative than the one our parents did.
I was talking to a friend the other day about my career plans, which focus on socially conscious business, and she said something that clicked with me, and I believe a whole generation. She said we're all just trying to change the world in our own way. Whether it's by becoming business people, doctors, researchers, teachers, or lawyers we believe we can make a difference in our profession. Yes, we aren't overthrowing the system, but don't think we don't care.
Maybe we are the quiet generation, but if you think that means we're not going to change anything, I think you're in for a big surprise.
It's interesting to me that Kristof titled his piece "The Age of Ambition." I think there's a double meaning there. It's not just now, this year, this decade; it's also about the way people are. Who was it (I've seen it attributed to several thinkers) who said only a fool is not a leftist at 20 and only a fool still is at 40? That's an exaggeration, of course, but it has a kernel of truth. Complacency is for older people.
If you can't say it in 60 seconds, you have a problem. Your strategy isn't clear enough. Nowadays we call it "the elevator speech," meaning a quick description of the business that you could do in the time you share with a stranger in an elevator. It's becoming popular in the everyday language of the entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the teaching of entrepreneurship.
I don't think its academic. I think it's important. I think it's a great exercise that everybody in business should be able to do. Let's get simple, let's get focused, let's get powerful.
I've been writing lately about the heart of the plan, also called the strategy. What better way to condense it than in a quick elevator speech. If you can't do it, worry.
Start your speech with a person (or business, or organization) in a situation. Personalize. Identify clearly. For example:
John Jones doesn't particularly care about clothes but he knows he has to look good. He sees clients every day in the office, and he lives in a ritzy suburb, where he often sees clients by accident on weekends. But he hates to shop for clothes (The Trunk Club).
Jane Smith wants to do her own business plan. She knows her business and what she wants to do, but wants help organizing the plan and getting the right pieces together. The plan needs to look professional because she's promised to show it to her bank as part of the merchant account process (Business Plan Pro).
Paul and Milena live in a beautiful apartment in Manhattan, with their two kids. Paul has a great job in Soho, Milena works from home, and neither has time for food shopping (Just Fresh).
Acme Consulting has five people managing several shared email addresses: info@acme.com, sales@acme.com, and admin@acme.com. The five of them have trouble not stepping on each other. Sometimes a single email gets answered three or four times, with different answers. Sometimes an email goes unanswered for days, because everybody thinks somebody else answered it (EmailCenter Pro).
Notice that in each of these examples I could be much more general. The Trunk Club targets mainly men who don't like to shop but need to dress well, and have enough money to pay for the service. Business Plan Pro is for the do-it-yourselfer who wants good business planning. EmailCenter Pro is for companies managing shared email addresses like sales@ or info@. But instead of generally describing a market, I've made it personal.
Sometimes you can get away with generalizing. "Farmers in the Willamette Valley," for example, or "parents of gifted children." It's an easy way to slide into describing a market. However, I suspect that you're almost always better off starting with a more readily imaginable single person, and let that person stand for your target market.
As I work on my next book I've been focusing recently on the heart of the plan, the essential strategy. It occurs to me that there is a very good match between that essential strategy and what we call "the elevator speech," meaning a quick (60 seconds in business plan competitions) verbal description of your company.
After all, the elevator speech ought to include all three of the main elements of that heart of the plan:
Of course the classic elevator speech then goes on to a fourth component that depends on the situation, asking for the order, or for a business card, or for investment follow-up, and so forth.
So I'm thinking that it's a good idea to focus some attention on how to build that elevator speech, piece by piece. That might also be useful in the business venture contest mode too. So this post introduces a five-part series of posts on that topic.
The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan is out! ...
