Is Your Elevator Pitch Ready?

By: Rusty Keeley

Keeley Companies is a family-owned business comprised of L. Keeley Construction, ADB Companies, ZeroDay Technology Solutions, KDG, Mercury Communications, and we are a proud partner of Inspired Solutions. That is the Power of One. One single source for Construction,

Infrastructure, Technology, Development, Logistics, and Wireless. Welcome to Keeley Town.

In order to bring Keeley Town to life, we decided to focus on elevator pitches. At our 2018 Keeley Annual Sales and Marketing Summit (KASM), we challenged our business leaders across the company to develop their elevator pitch, record themselves, and submit their recording to be watched and critiqued during KASM. Each leader received feedback so we could collectively take our elevator pitches to the next level. What we all discovered through this process, was that it was a much more challenging task than expected. The ability to speak about our company and our roles in a concise, yet thorough pitch was a skill we all realized we all could improve on. After KASM, we decided to give ourselves another chance and extended the challenge to all Keeley'ns.

When developing your elevator pitch, you have to start with why having one is important. Keeley Companies serves a wide variety of industries and has a unique culture that our people should be able to passionately and genuinely speak about. The next step is to address what it takes to develop a captivating pitch. An elevator pitch should be a concise, short message that you want to instill in someone’s mind. It should take no longer than the period of time that you would ride an elevator, hence the name. Your pitch should include details about what your company does, your role, and what makes your company unique. The goal is to leave someone wanting more - enough that they take a business card or request additional information.

So, why is this so important? It’s important for two major reasons. The first of those is that everyone is a brand ambassador and should be able to sell your organization and themselves. The second reason is recruitment. We do our best recruiting through what I like to call, our People Pipeline. That pipeline is comprised of people in our lives who we think would make a great Keeley’n. If we are prepared with a short pitch about Keeley Companies, we can be prepared to recruit someone at any time. So how do you create your own elevator pitch? Start with a concise outline of what aspects you want to include in your pitch and emphasize on the things that make your company unique, such as culture. As with anything, practice makes perfect and is the key to an impactful elevator pitch. The more you practice, the better you will be at piquing the interest of the person you’re talking to.

Our leadership learned so much throughout this process and after a steep competition with over 60 submissions, the top ten participants received $1,000 each. Check out the video below for a compilation of our winners and hear what this challenge meant to them.