I’m a big fan of the blogs and articles that are published on Forbes.com and this morning our COO, Pete Gracey, coincidentally shared an article with the team written by Carmine Gallo, a contributor to Forbes, regarding how to pitch anything in 15 seconds. At first glance the title set my expectations toward some cheesy, outdated methodology, but what I discovered really resonated with the process our company has been working to put in play.
That process essentially is trying to lay to rest the question of: “How do I explain my product or service in a way that gets to the point but still has a short, but engaging story to back it up?”
It’s such an easy and straight forward concept, but at the same time I feel like it was the first time I’ve heard it put into writing or displayed in a video. Our company particularly partners with many technology companies where we handle a good portion of their outbound marketing efforts and so this was the perfect resource to share with colleagues.
The method is simple. Draw a circle on a whiteboard (or visualize yourself doing it) and write inside of that circle the one thing you’d want your audience to know about your product or service. Carmine insists that this be Twitter friendly, so under 140 characters is the way to go.
Next, draw 3 arrows off the circle and write the top 3 key benefit points under each line. Carmine uses the viewer-friendly example of a company called Lush, which sells soaps and cosmetics. So his 3 key benefits were respectively: “Fresh”, “Environmentally friendly” and “Ethical campaigns”
Lastly, enforce the 3 key benefits with a short story, an example or some statistics. This only needs to be a few sentences or so as this is the back-end story that will provide the credibility for the high level benefit statements.
And there you have it, a message map that can really be used by any person who sells virtually anything on this planet.
Take a look at the article for the full story, as well as his quick video explanation.
