10. The Elevator Pitch - Turning Your Brand Position into a Marketing Message

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3 Lessons

LESSON OVERVIEW

Your Elevator Pitch Is Your Marketing Template

Apple's Guy Kawasaki taught entrepreneurs to compress their idea into 10 slides — then distill those into a 30-second elevator pitch.
The premise: one day you’ll bump into an investor in an elevator. Bill Green’s version happened at a urinal — he pitched a company he barely knew, became its CEO, and entered the clean tech sector. Boom.
You probably won’t close a deal in an elevator — but your pitch becomes the template for your sales sheet, website copy, slide deck, and social bio.

Key Insight: Get the pitch right and everything downstream becomes easier.

The most common pitch mistake: leading with the company instead of the customer.
The fundamentals of brand positioning focuses on the customer’s problem first — not the company’s solution.

Key Insight: Instead of We-We-We a pitch should focus onYou-You-You. Start from the customer’s problem, not the company’s solution.

#	Step	What to Do
1	Attention Grabber	Ask a provocative question that makes the prospect feel their problem.
2	The Problem	Address their specific pain point. Connect to their reality.
3	Our Solution	Your Secret Sauce — what only you can offer. This is Field 3 of your Positioning Statement.
4	How It Works	Brief description of your features, methods, or process.
5	Results	Proof it works — savings, case studies, documented outcomes.

Key Insight: Same five-step structure at every length — just a different pace.

Make feel spontaneous and focused on the person in front of you.
With the structure solid, every pitch can adapt to the audience, setting, and time available — and always feel fresh.

Key Insight: More than a sales script, your elevator pitch will form the basis of your Web messaging and marketing materials.

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