Behind The Scenes Of A Quick Win Consulting Call—Elevator Pitch Edition | Episode 82

Hello hello and welcome back to the Purpose & Progress Podcast.

I’m taking you behind the scenes of my most popular offer since I started them in 2021. I call them Quick Win Consulting Calls.

Normally they’re 1-off, often someone comes back sporadically when they have a fresh idea or project or mental block. And one of my clients had them on a recurring basis—weekly for about a year. (I don’t have the bandwidth to do that with every client, but it’s nice to be able to shake things up and use the same container in different ways with different clients.)

Regardless, these calls—and really all my offers—are about holding space and brainstorming ideas, as well as taking action and making incremental changes that really add up. And for my most of my multi-passionate deep thinking clients, it’s about sifting through and either prioritizing or amalgamating the 101 ideas they already have.

So in this example of a recent consulting call, we co-created around his elevator pitch. (Yes, his—I only interview women on this podcast and I mostly work with women, but I don’t officially or categorically work with women only.) Now, these are hour-long consulting calls and we normally cover a LOT of ground, either going super deep into a topic like this one about elevator pitches, or super broad like audience and positioning…also like this one.

He was struggling because he’s a deeply caring deep thinker who easily verges into overthinking mode—like all my clients. And he has big ideas and lots of proprietary approaches and turns of phrases. It feels really complicated for him to boil it all down into an elevator pitch. And to connect with his ideal client when he’s so in his own head and heart.

I have a whole episode on elevator pitches and introducing yourself with confidence, episode 63, linked below. And I have a whole free guided workbook around this idea, always linked in the continue the conversation section of the shownotes or at ashleesang.com/podcastfreebie.

I’m going to unpack some of his concerns and hangups, as well as the advice I gave, so that hopefully you can apply these insights to take your own confident, meaningful action.

The goal of the elevator pitch is to elicit that lean-in moment. So we’re not we’re not actually pitching anything. We’re not converting sales with this elevator pitch. We are simply doing that initial trust building, trying to create that “this guy is interesting” moment.

And it’s hard to condense decades of experience and passion into 1, 2, 3 sentences. You’re not imagining that. But it still needs to be done. Because people will put you in a box regardless. It’s human nature. It’s how we sift through information and people and understand our role in relation to everything we’re taking in all day every day. So better to give them a box, even if it’s not all-encompassing, than for them to make connections or assumptions that’s don’t exist.

So, during our consulting call, we focused on the common thread that is the crux of any offer he’s creating. The thing that’s the central part of his entire philosophy. And it manifests differently and he engages with it differently and his clients experience it differently, but the essence is always there. For him, it’s this idea of focusing on getting to know and improving yourself in order to lead others to do the same and create a ripple effect in all the domains you touch.

And full permission to have more than one intro depending on the context, depending on who you’re showing up for and who you’re talking to and what feels like a priority on any given day.

If you’re having conversations around specific offers or market research conversations, it might look very different than if you’re running a workshop to a room of corporate executives. You’re the same person, your core approach is the same, but you’re meeting people where they are. You can really lean into X, Y or Z part of yourself and the way you view your work.

It’s not fake. It’s not fickle. It is simply reading the room.

Another big point we unpacked together was the idea of positioning himself as a coach. He had some resistance around this because he has this whole vision for how he wants to revolutionize the coaching industry, as well as who’s defined as a leader and what his role in the entire experience will be.

But at the heart of it all are coaching frameworks and philosophies. And he’s opposed to traditional leadership trainings and top-down consulting, so I encouraged him to lean into the coaching element in the elevator pitch. Because otherwise the person on the receiving end is going to put him in a bucket anyway. I prefer that you yourself a label, simply so they can categorize you in their brain, even though you know you do and are so much more than any label. It’s better for you to choose a label than have them mislabel you.

And then what brings it all together is showing how your coaching (or whatever you do) is different, special, something they’ve never felt or seen.

Another hangup my client had (that’s super common) is wondering if his intro is professional-speak enough and if it’s business-problem-and-solution-speak enough? And while yes, we need to make it appealing from a logical standpoint and justifiable from a budget perspective, in general, I think it matters way more to capture what your perfect-fit people actually care about knowing. Because we’re all, yes, logical, but also emotional humans. We want to be speaking their language AND our language—the magic is where it intersects. And if it doesn’t hit, you could tweak your positioning. Or if you’re feeling good about it, it’s more likely that they’re just not your ideal audience. And that’s ok.

So, if you have to bend and reconfigure yourself and put yourself in a box of someone else’s making and a still feel like you need to convince them to enter into your orbit, that’s not what we’re trying to do here. At least for me, the idea of a values-aligned elevator pitch is to instantly be speaking the same language, instantly be attracting the people who think and feel how you do.

My client often worries that he needs to speak to a different type of audience than who he ACTUALLY wants to work with because of those business justifications and budget lines we talked about. But based on the conversations I’ve had and the discussions I see online, there are lots and lots and lots of people out there who think and feel like he does. It’s just a question of growing his network and his confidence in that new pool of people. I have a whole episode around attraction marketing as a means to human-first sales, episode 80, linked below.

And part of the problem for him is that the people, and especially the companies, he has PAST experience working with might be off-put by this new impact-driven language. So his concern is valid to some extent, but that’s the point of pivoting. His new vision for the present and for the future isn’t for the people of his past.

Or maybe he existing network could surprise him, and by leaning into what he actually thinks and feels, he just set himself apart. He also gives them permission to think differently than the status quo. And he’s walking the walk, as this authenticity is a cornerstone of his approach to leadership coaching.

Plus, he can bring all that past experience and all those past conversations to the table with his current clients—it’s not lost, it’s just iterated upon and viewed from a fresh lens.

So for him, it’s about using words like “leadership coaching” and then combining them with ideas like “for the good of the world” or “to make an impact beyond ourselves” or whatever combination that instantly anchors who he is and why he does it. That way, any other executive coach they see pop up around LinkedIn or via cold email them will instantly feel different than what he’s putting out into the interwebs and in real like conversations. That’s what we want.

All that to say, I personally am for more injecting who you are and how you think. Again, going for that that lean-in moment that, hmm, tell me more reaction from the person on the other end of the exchange.

As long as we don’t lose them with too much personal jargon and such a big-picture vision with no breadcrumbs for anyone to understand. It’s about striking that balance in any given opportunity to introduce yourself.

Ok and then speaking of jargon, he was wanting to use the word “unstuck,” which along with “help” and “level-up” is potentially the most used word in any positioning statement ever.

But besides being way too generic, I wasn’t sure even sure that “unstuck” was necessarily accurate. By saying that you get people unstuck, that means that they would be thinking of themselves as stuck, and he would be presenting himself as a solution of said stuckness. But he feels like his traditional CEO clients often have big exec egos and might not admit to feeling stuck. Or even without any egos, his clients often have momentum and forward energy and they want to be better than good, not better than bad (aka stuck in this case).

He had also mentioned his aversion to aligning with workplace culture in the past. But I pushed back a bit, thinking that his ideal audience, which are mission-driven founders who care about living out their values, and who care about their people, would also care about the culture of their organization.

So I thought it was absolutely relevant to talk about workplace culture, potentially even in an implicit and roundabout way without using the word “culture,” as long as it’s anchored in the fact that he works with the founders and CEOs who care about culture. In that case, I don’t think he’d be directed to the HR person, instead, his ideal client would think, “Oh, that’s me. I have invested so much into the culture of my organization, everything from taking the parental leave meetings to hiring a five person HR team, even though most founders of companies my size only have one person.” Or whatever it may be.

Which brought us to our next point of discussion—reframing the idea of “Executive” to the concept of “Leadership”.

I actually think it could be quite interesting to position himself as a leadership and culture person, again, either implicitly or explicitly. I that would be a really, really great ideal customer persona question—which of those terms they align with, how they view those concepts, when you hear culture, do you think of yourself, or do you think of your HR person, etc.?

That’s a bonus tip—keep in mind how people talk about themselves and their problems and aspirations and environments. That way you don’t have to guess. So whether you’re having official market research interviews or you’re listening intently or reviewing transcripts from sales calls or consulting calls you’re already having or you’re really not even in contact with your dream people yet and you’re just doing social listening on social media and via podcast interviews and in workshops—try to find some recurring themes and/or try on something that you hear that catches your ear.

So, again, the nuance of the words we choose matter. In the past, all his clients and target companies viewed and called themselves executives. But the word “executive” does carry a negative connotation to a lot of people who are escaping corporate hamster wheels or fighting corporate greed or have deep imposter syndrome, or whatever it is.

When way more importantly, when I flagged this to my client, he said, “And when I think of the word executive, I think of very different people, pretentious, shallow, narcissist.”

To which I said, “Yikes.”

Maybe that’s the core of the resistance he’s had toward selling and writing and all things company growth? If that’s who he thought he was targeting and he has this visceral negative reaction to the type of person that you’re meant to be targeting, of course, that doesn’t feel good.

And that reinforced my advice to drop “executive coach” (which he had some attachment to from its formal definition via his official coach training). Instead, I suggested that he double down leadership coach or just coach a label that’s then explained an augmented with all the other context he’ll give.

I think there are plenty of people with plenty of money who would be willing to invest in what he does and how he does it, even if they don’t carry “exec” titles. And in fact, his mission-minded ideal clients likely don’t identify as executives or if they do, they likely identify as executives who are cut-of-a different-cloth. They’re a type of executive who is a renegade, someone who is open and wants to be a leader in their own right.

But I do think if you founded a company, you probably see yourself as a leader in some way, even if it’s just as a thought leader. I think a lot of founders actually feel that way, especially women founders, or people who have just been historically marginalized. They hit this success, and look around them and think, “I had this big idea inside me and I couldn’t not create it. All of a sudden, I have, know, $5 million in startup funds and 60 people whose livelihood depends on me and every day I look in the mirror and think, who the heck put me in charge?”

Being empathetic to all that will make all the difference in his elevator pitch.

Ok, another prong of elements we went through—actually injecting yourself into your own intro.

I personally think it’s essential to make it clear what’s important for you. Again, it will instantly resonate with someone who thinks and feels the same way you do. And it’ll deter people who don’t. Which is what we want so we don’t waste anyone’s time.

So with the elevator pitch, yes, you absolutely need to keep the person on the receiving end in mind. Speak their language. Meet them where they are and cover what they need to hear from you. But give them the essence of who you are and what you represent.

But this is the one time amongst all your other sales copy and content that you can focus the most on yourself because it’s about you, it’s about how you show up, and it’s about why they should care.

And if they don’t care, then that’s fine, they’re just not your person. And that’s fine, they can keep you in mind for someone else.

I also think that’s the power of a really loving and owning your offers, but also leaning into your network. So if you’re on a call with someone and you think, I’m not the right fit for them because of values, personality, budget, collaboration preferences, skillset, whatever, but I do know this other people who could be a perfect-fit. Then you introduce them and it’s wins all around, whether or not there’s a referral bonus involved. This is also a way for you to practice empathy toward them and meet them where they are without bending and breaking and boxing yourself into something you don’t want to do. And then inevitably later resent them or your own decision. I think most people actually would appreciate being gently turned away in this way because they’d be that one step closer to the perfect fit rather than kind of sort of trying to make it work and it’s not perfect for anyone.

Another topic we dove into was how much of the past needs to make it into the present. And for me, your elevator pitch is not so much about your experience and what you have done, so much is what you currently do and are working toward. You always have your bio and CV and LinkedIn and long-form outlets to share about your past.

For me, the elevator pitch is basically, “Here’s where I am and where I’m going.” It can be a little bit future-gazing, it can be a bit visionary, but it does still need to be rooted in the here and now, including how/why people work with you now.

I reminded my client that he has a whole team around him who sees his vision—there were 2 other people on the call with us! So if we can see it, that means that there can absolutely be paying customers and collaborators and referral partners who can also see it too.

So I advocated for more of stepping out of the box and showing who he is and less of boxing himself into what he thinks people want. Especially because I knew from all our conversations how much strife and internal dissonance that gave him. My advice: just take all those shoulds off the table.

But it’s easier said than done. That’s why people need coaching and mentors and consultants and peers they can rely on for that empathetic accountability and outside perspective. But the more you can practice really owning “here’s how I operate and move through the world” and “here’s what my big picture vision is”, and trusting that people will see it, the more natural it becomes.

And to that end, come up with 10 different elevator pitches that feel right and try them on for size. Just decide that day or in that moment. You don’t have to memorize these necessarily. You just have to loosely internalize them so that no matter how you talk about your business and yourself, it’ll feel right.

In any given moment, you can speak off the cuff because you’ve done all of the intentional brainstorming and prep work so that in the moment, you’re not reading a script, you’re just regurgitating what you already know to be true about what matters about the work you do.

If you’re someone who thrives under structure or constraints, create multiple versions—a 1-sentence, 2-sentence, 4-sentence, full bio. For lots of us, especially multi-passionate deep thinkers who care about so much, being more concise is actually harder. So starting with the one-sentence option isn’t always the best way to go. Sometimes it’s easier to start with all the moving pieces and then pare down from there.

Ok, so hopefully this didn’t feel TOO all over the place. I took the transcript from the call, but then spent ages cleaning it up and making it coherent enough to be a podcast episode. Repurposing content is amazing for the sake of brand consistency, meeting people where they are in the mediums they prefer, creating a never-ending pool for you to draw from. But it’s not always a massive time saver. Hopefully these were all useful takeaways though to get your own wheels turning for how to think about yourself, your work, and your perfect-fit people.

If you want to have a super dynamic co-creation session like this, book a Quick Win Consulting Call with me. It’s linked in the shownotes or at ashleesang.com/quickwin.

Be sure to check out that link and all the resources in the show notes below.

And come back next time (in 2 weeks!) because we’ll be in conversation with another ambitious and inspirational woman entrepreneur. (Hopefully…I’ve been dragging my feet on inviting guests, but I think we’re finally back to our normal programming!)