Elevator Pitch Strategies - Perfect Your Pitch and Boost Your Brand

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season. This is season 24 of the Developer podcast, Building Better Developers. The focus this season, building better businesses. We've gone through a couple things in the recent seasons. This one we're going to get a little bit on that entrepreneur side, the pruner side of developer pruner. Not to be confused with the manure side of something because we don't even have that. That's only if you're in farming and we don't have to deal with that right now. But what you do have to deal with is me. My name is Rob Brodhead. I am one of the founders of developer pruner, also a founder of RB Consulting, where we are one of those boutique consulting kind of firms. What we do is we sit down with you. We help you understand. We learn from you, your business. What is it that makes your business special? It's not that we don't know anything about business, but it's like yours is unique. So we work with you to craft that specific recipe through simplification, automation, integration, innovation to take your technology sprawl and turn it into a nice little pretty thing with a bow on top so that your big investment in technology is one that is a return on investment that is very good for you, that you're very happy about it, that you can manage it not only today, but six months, six years from now that you have that roadmap, that technology roadmap that helps you be successful. Good thing, bad things. Now the bad thing is, is I was going into this. For those of you that listen to it or look at it on the YouTube side, you know that I'm trying to figure out what is my good thing, bad thing for this week. And yes, I am buying time right now to try to figure out what that could be because I've sort of exhausted some of my good ones lately. So one of the bad things is weather lately is just not been, it's not been cooperative. We've had a couple of nice days, but it's really been like wet and it's cold because it's winter. That's what all of this kind of stuff is. The good thing is, is it has allowed me some time where I was like, normally we'd be doing, you know, yard work or stuff like that. It's allowed me time to just be like stuck at home. And so like, you know, there's definitely work to do around the house, but it's also allowed me to like catch up on some games and some reading and some things like that. Cause I've actually had a little bit of downtime even amidst all the work and that kind of stuff. So there you have it. I actually like managed to find a way to like work out a good thing and a bad thing. And that also bought time for Michael to do the same because he's going to reduce himself and give his good thing, bad thing. So dive into it. Thanks for up. My name is Michael Milosh. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the founder of envision QA where we help businesses build software that meets their needs. And we do this using a test driven QA perspective where we walk through your user journey. What are your stories? How do you work within your business or how does your software need to work for you through that, through those questions, through those journeys, we help you build the software or implement the right software for your business to streamline your processes. Good and bad. So I will start with the bag because I'm hoping it's going to lead to something good coming out of this week. So for the last few weeks, I'd probably say about a month now, I have been in the process of switching off of coffee to tea and I thought it was being very health conscious, being very good about it. Last night after my wife bought me a new set of tea to try, I'm reading the box and I realize that my idea to reduce the amount of caffeine in my system to reduce my stress and anxiety, I went from drinking two cups of coffee a day to drinking two cups of coffee a day in the equivalent of 16 cups of coffee a day through tea. So which explains why my anxiety and my stress has gone up exponentially over the last month. So starting this week, I have now dropped down to literally four cups of one tea bag a day and so far I am not going into crash mode. So things are calming. I'm hoping to get a little bit more sleep, but even before the caffeine, I already had problems sleeping. So it's a lost cause. So that's my good and bad for this one. I will follow up that one. I will just say that I moved off of caffeine many, many years ago and have found that it really did. Now it could be because I got old and I'm just old and decrepit and stuff, but it did feel like I got, it seemed like my sleep got a lot better when I started shifting around my caffeine habits. So I wasn't consuming caffeine and sugar at nine and 10 o'clock at night instead of Like I sort of get it out of the way by noon and more or less can make it. Although I'm not still getting, I'm also getting old. So sometimes it's like eight 30 at night and I start to read a book and like one page into it. Now I'm asleep. So there's that problem. So some, but it does mean that like if I do decide to like grab a Red Bull real quick at that point, I will be awake for a while. I might be bouncing off the ceiling and Spider-Manning across the place, but at least I will be awake. That is a digression because what we're actually going to talk about this time is we're going to get into, we'll talk a little bit about like, we'll call it like the elevator pitch, but it's really, it's really a bit like, it's like the core, what do you do kind of side of your business. This is actually very useful from you, from a professional point of view. And a lot of us, I think just like brush that aside, which is I think part of why it's so difficult for us to do this for our business because it like as a developer, what do you do? I write code. I create software. That is very often what you're going to hear. If you ask a developer, what do you do? They're like, you know, and they'll, it'll be more to it because it's usually like, because we're developers and we geek out a little bit. It's like, well, I write Java code and I use JavaScript for the front end and I use SQL server on my backend or whatever it is. And if you guys don't use that, I'm sorry if I offended you. If you love it, great. I didn't offend you, but we, we don't really talk about, we don't have a story for what we do. It's like, what do you do? I swing a hammer and I nail nails. I write code. I create software. There's not really, that's like, that's not going to be a blockbuster movie next summer. Like, you know, Marvel's Avengers is not, they sit around and eat sandwiches. You know, it's like, it's nothing like that. It's there's a story. And that's where you're going to be able to be more memorable, particularly when we're talking about your business is get something that's going to like draw them in. We've talked in the past, it's been a while, we'll have to go back to this. We've talked about the ideas of funnels and bringing people in and sort of like, you know, casting a wide net and then starting to bring people in to your business and your folks so that you go from people that maybe they could be a customer to like, these are probably customers like these are customers and being able to sell or pitch them a product that is one that they need that you're now. It's not a hard sell because it's like you've already figured out that these are the people that you're building this product for. And so they're just like, take my money, take my money, because that's what you're giving them. But you start that with the elevator pitch or with your, we'll talk about like your brand. And this isn't your vision or your mission statement because, you know, it can be enticing like when Google's used to be don't be evil. But when they said, oh, no, we can't do that anymore, then you're in trouble because it's like, wait a minute, why aren't you no longer don't be evil? Why did you kick that? Why did you stop doing that? One, why did you have to say that in the first place? And two, why did you stop? What we did, I'm digressing a lot today, I guess it's because it's later in the day. The thing I want to do is you want to distill what it is your business does and provide to really as few words as possible, like literally a couple of sentences. So if you do software and your company is, well, we just write software, we write solutions, that's not going to help. That's like everybody writes software solutions or it feels like it. That's a huge field you're going to niche down. Or if you're somebody that likes it said, definitely you need to niche down and you need to get to something that is very specific that somebody is going to be like, I need that now. Not like, yeah, I like people that mow my yard, Akechi. It's somebody that's like, I need you to mow my yard with the push mower today or something like that. This is where we get into the specifics. And so I think it's also something that's important for us as entrepreneurs is to make sure we're doing something that we enjoy. And this is part of what it is. So instead of just like, for example, and this is sort of the journey that I went on at some point, it's like, I can write software. I can write software in any language. I can make it do pretty much whatever the heck you want it to do. And I can make it do it in a way that is like pretty. And I can even do it probably better than other people from a cost perspective. That's like, so that's like my first, I'm like, hey, I'm not going to charge you an arm and a leg for it. And it doesn't mean I'm going to be cheap, but that means that you're like, you're going to get value for your money. So I'd say, okay, cool. There's something I can sort of latch onto. And as I started thinking about it, I was like, there are specific types of software that I really enjoy doing. There's certain tasks that I like doing. There's certain problems that I like to solve. And that's where I got into things like, hey, people struggle with technology. I understand technology. I have spent a lot of time learning technology so I can help people understand where technology will meet their problems in a way that is efficient, that is efficient in time and money and all those other resources. So now I'm also, you know, I'm narrowing this thing down. I'm getting to something more specific. Now within that, then it's like, you really got to, it like, it starts getting harder because now you're like niching down, niching down. And you think that what you're doing is you're throwing away potential customers, that there's money that's coming at you that you're now swatting away because you're focusing. But that's not it. What's happening is you're actually getting to the people that are always, that are actually going to give you money and not the people that are like, eh, maybe someday you could get money from me if I trip and my wallet falls out of my pocket. You're actually getting to people that are like, you're getting to a point where like, this is what I provide and there is a small, you know, very small pond of people that provide this. So this is what I'm giving you. And so when you find the people that need to be in that pond, it is a much easier transaction. So thoughts before I like, cause I've gone all over the place. So thoughts on that. So my initial thought, so when we talked about elevator pitch or kind of pitching your business these funnels, the whole concept of the elevator pitch kind of came from the idea of you're in an elevator for 30 seconds, a minute with someone. How quickly can you explain your business or what it is that you do to the person next to you to sell them on your product? That's kind of where this came from. I don't know the exact slogan, but you know, Apple had a good one. Like if you're selling products, you know, like a thousand songs in your pocket, the iPad or the iPod, they didn't get into technical specs. They didn't get into, Hey, this is a place. Now here's a audio device that plays music. Here's how many songs you have. That's it. Sold millions of them. If you're selling a product like t-shirts, coffee cups, whatever, it's very hard to say, Hey, buy my coffee mug. Well, why would I buy your coffee mug or someone else's coffee mug? That's where you kind of need to tell a story or describe your product or even your service in a way that one identifies who you are, but what it is that the customer is going to get from your product or from your service. I've heard this over and over again and for years, I kind of skirted it. It's like, Oh yes. In some situations, I really got it right. In other situations, I really got it wrong. Interestingly enough, it was during interviews for a job that it came to my mind that I need to sell myself to this employer to get hired. So I very quickly changed the narrative of the interview to who I am and what I do, not well, and what I do, but in a way that is what the company needs. Like I will be a value for you. All this stuff on paper. Yeah, it's me, but you're going to nitpick and ask me, well, how can I establish myself differently from the next candidate or from another resume? That's your elevator pitch. It's what makes you excited? What sells you? What is it that you're doing? What are you providing? So like at the beginning, if you've listened to a couple of these, I'm constantly tweaking my elevator pitch because it is a little hard to sell QA or quality assurance software or services to companies when the bottom line is I need a product to sell. I don't need someone to sit around and test, you know, it's cost versus, you know, product. But every company needs some type of quality assurance to ensure that the product goes out well. Like if you have, you know, manufacturing, you always see in some high end products, those little tags, you know, inspected by or checked by. It's to make sure that the product goes out the same high quality every time so that you can say, hey, I have these wonderful soft Italian cotton shirts that, you know, you wear and you feel wonderful. That's selling the experience, not the shirt. Yes, someone will buy the shirt for that experience. So that's a lot of the side. I've also kind of gone off the rails in many different directions here, but that's where it goes with these elevator pitches. Because when we're talking to our customers, especially if we're selling services, our customer, the person we're talking to may need a different elevator pitch than what we're used to giving. So when you're talking to someone, if you're trying to sell a service, find out who they are, what they do. If they're a business and you're selling a service, what services might they need? You know, what is it that they're doing that? Oh, hey, have you thought of this or, you know, what's your company doing this situation? And that might be your end right there. It could be, oh, well, we don't have anything for that. You know, why do you ask that? And then you could say, well, here, here is a journey of how you can get from here to there. Here's how we can improve that. Or here's a way to improve that. Sometimes even giving free advice or free tips is a good way to get a referral back to, hey, you helped me with this problem. Can your company help us with this other problem? And I think that's part of it is being memorable. And it's interesting to me that if you go and examine the masters of memory, if you look at these people that go to these people that can like they can flip through a deck of playing cards and memorize the exact order in under 60 seconds, or they can, you know, give them a 10 different dollar bills and they can memorize all of the ID and IDs on each of those. And they'll get like in a minute or less or something like that. When you talk to them or when you look at, you know, examine how this stuff works is it often comes back down to stories that that is much more memorable. So, you know, one, one, one, five, five, five, six, six, blah, blah, blah, doesn't hold anything. But when they turn that into a story, then the next thing you know, it becomes memorable. And it's even for a long period of time, because now it's like triggering different portions of your mind. And that's really what you want with an elevator pitch is it you're probably not going to be able to like just really sell them right there. You may look out and it's like the right person, the right time. But a lot of times what it is, and this is with networking in general and stuff like that, you want to be memorable. You want to have a way for when they're talking to their buddy or they're talking to their boss or a co-worker or something like that, and come across somebody that knows or that needs a product that you provide, that they're going to remember that product and you and be able to say, hey, I talked to this guy in the elevator just the other day, and this is the product that he provides. And it sounds like that's exactly what you want. Now, part of it is, I think part of the whole pitch that some people miss is, yes, you want to tell a story. But I think what is very valuable is within that story, within that pitch is you want to address the pain points or the questions that you the pain points you resolve or the questions that you answer. This is really used a lot on when you do get to like funnels and so that you get out on the web. A lot of times what it is, is it's because it's based on SEO and things like that. It's stuff like, I want the people that are asking these questions to come to my site because I'm going to give them the answer they need to hear. I'm going to be able to solve that problem for them. I'm going to give them an answer. And it's going to be in a way that's going to like match their budget, their time, whatever it is. And so that's part of what you want to lay out, is you want to lay out within your pitch. You don't want to be negative or anything, but you do want to talk about like, what is it? What is the value that you bring? And it's essentially what is the problem you solve? Or what is the pain point that you reduce? Or what is it? What is like an art of it? It's like, what is an ideal customer? What are they looking for? And then you get to say, hey, you're looking for me. So it may be things like instead of just selling yourself in a general sense, you think about it more of go to that, you know, that avatar, that ideal, that ideal customer. And if you're talking to them in an elevator, you've got those 30 seconds or a minute is touching on those points that are their concern. So, for example, let's say I'm a real estate agent and I sell, you know, two bedroom apartments in this certain neighborhood that's like, you know, at a certain price range. Well, you have a very specific customer. You want somebody that wants a two bedroom in that price range in that neighborhood. So that's part of what your elevator pitch needs to be, as you need to make sure that you're highlighting that, hey, if you're looking for a two bedroom apartment in this area for this price, then this is exactly what I do. From a software point of view, this is where it gets really challenging if you're a developer, because this is where you need to really niche down and you need to say, OK, where am I going to beat out everybody else? It's a little bit what Michael might mention with the resume side. It's like if you're in an interview, there's a lot of people that have roughly the same resume, roughly. So the thing is, is where is it that you can like hang your hat, that you can really shine? For example, I've said I can solve, I can write in a lot of different languages. I can do whatever software I need to build. I can do it different environments. However, there are going to be some that I'm better than others, some because I haven't done them in a while, some because I just like them better. Whatever it is, is going to like allow me to narrow down. What do I want to do? But another way you can look at it as a developer is like you're a problem solver. So what are the problems you solve more often than not? Are you more of a like an e-commerce person? Do you generate catalogs? Do you do you generate code? Do you do code generation? Do you do mathematical or data manipulation? Do you deal more with like moving stuff back and forth between systems and integrations? Do you are you process driven where you can go through and you can find a way to create the most efficient processes? Are you a performance tuning kind of person where you look at stuff, you can find better ways to do it? Are you a visionary of some sort where you like the UI and the user experience is really your like you help people. You're like the person that can help people make that really clunky software a fun thing to use. Those are the things that you're looking for. It's like what are the problems that you solve or the problems that you want to solve and what are the ones that you do the best? Because those are where you're going to start like getting those hooks out there that people are going to be like, hey, you have this problem and know somebody that will solve that problem and make sure you've got a business card or something for them as well so they can hand that off. Thoughts? Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because the other thing, too, that the elevator pitch, not just the cards and that, but also talking to other people like on podcasts or just social media in general, tick tock, wherever, you know, get out there, talk to people. I've seen some very good startups just go on tick tock, just start talking. And then all of a sudden they have followers and then they start talking to their followers and they get connections. So. Well, you have an idea or you may already have a business. It doesn't hurt to try to keep pushing the envelope with your elevator pitch. Keep missing it down. One of the best ways to figure out if you need to niche it down, am I getting customers that are not my ideal customer? Meaning, are these customers taking more time away from me working on my business or providing value to my other customers? How do I not attract those type of customers? How do I attract the customers I do like, or I do work with better? So. It's not just about drumming up business. It's also about refining the business that you have and improving the processes that you're, you know, that will help your business grow and improve those funnels. Yeah, it's almost like a negative improvement where it's like sometimes some of the best things you can do is not take on certain customers. And trust me, I've had a few of those over the years where it's just like, I would have been way better off had I not messed with that customer. And it's not always because they don't pay or they're, you know, anything like that. Sometimes just like that took you away from your focus. For example, you could be sitting here right now and spending too much time, like, I don't know, reading social media when you could be writing an email to us, which is much more valuable, at least to us, but probably to you as well, because then you can go out there, you can recommend or suggest or request whatever it is that you want us to talk about. And we will probably get around to it because we want to provide information and topics that are useful to you. If you don't like email, then you can do it at developernor.com. You can fill out our contact form there. You can reach us on X at developernor. There's a Facebook page out there that is the developernor Facebook page. You can leave us a comment wherever it is that you are listening to this podcast. Or if you go out to the developernor channel on YouTube, you can check out all of our prior videos and episodes that are the ones that have videos, side to it, all of that. Leave us questions or leave us comments, leave us questions, leave us feedback, and we will get back around to you. We promise. It may take a little bit, but we will get to you because sometimes we get some like stuff that's from a long time ago. We got to go dig that back up and go say, where was that code that we were using? Or where did we get that example? Sometimes it's from a site that no longer exists. I digress, but I'm not going to anymore. I'm going to let you get back to your day. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers, the developernor podcast. 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