Pitching Good Works

…the wise makes his speech judicious

and adds persuasiveness to his lips…

 (Proverbs 16:23)

One of my new volunteer activities is working with future leaders in the community to help expand their business etiquette skills. Once a month, I am involved with a team who meets with a diverse group of young people and role play various experiences they should expect to have in a business or professional environment. This weekend, we engaged them in developing his or her individual elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is a business tool for clearly articulating what you or your organization has to offer. I prefer to call it your 30 second commercial: If you only have a short amount of time, like an elevator ride, what would you say that makes a lasting impression that leads to a follow-up?

An elevator pitch is a prepared statement. When crafting one, consider the following steps to make sure that the message is interesting, memorable, and succinct:

1. Identify the goal or objective of the pitch.
2. Explain what you or your organization does by using examples of problems you have solved.
3. Communicate what makes you UNIQUE, your value proposition.
4. Engage with an open ended question.
5. Put it all together.
6. Practice, until you get the pitch into a natural sounding 30 second conversation.

I love working with creative young people because their imaginations are limitless. Even though it was role-play, one young man pretended he was trying to get an invitation to apply for an intern position and he wanted to share his concepts for the first commercially available teleporter. Based on his pitch, I would have invited him to go through the interview process!

Working through the process was a reminder that I had not updated my elevator pitch in awhile. Using the guide provided above, a revised statement to introduce our workforce readiness solution to potential community or industry influencers reads as: My company provides consulting services to industrial organizations looking to expand their operations or their workforce. From my experiences in both corporate American and as a consultant, one of the issues that I have seen time and again is that small to mid-sized companies have a difficult time finding qualified candidates who have the necessary soft skills to succeed in a manufacturing or industrial work environment. To address that need, we developed workforce readiness solution that aides our partners in hiring the right people with the potential to excel in manufacturing jobs. Who in your organization is responsible for the #Youarehired! activities of identifying the technical and interpersonal skills needed to be successful on day one in the workplace? Here’s our capability brochure with our contact information. (Of course, the spoken message would be tailored for the audience.)

http://www.latrobellc.com/industrial-people.php

In working with young people, we try to emphasize that you never know when you will have an opportunity to make a lasting impression. Developing an elevator pitch is one example of preparing future leaders for likely exchanges in the professional environment. What other tools would you suggest we introduce and role play with the next generation to equip them for success in the workplace? Feel free to comment or send me an email to latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. If you like this post and want to catch up on some of my previous discussions, please visit the full Purposed Work blog at http://ltr-latrobe-mfg.blogspot.com/.

Influencing Good Works

Iron sharpens iron,

and one man sharpens another.

(Proverbs 27:17)

 

Have you ever taken a look at the people in your LinkedIn, civic, or other professional networks to evaluate whether or not you have mutually beneficial business synergies? We were developing a marketing campaign for our workforce training solutions  and this question began our brainstorming exercise.  Why would key decision makers give us an audience to discuss our vision for educating and training through workforce readiness initiatives?


In this development process, one roadblock was evident: wanting to be an advocate for young people about careers in manufacturing and influencing the parents and community leaders of the value of our program required more than wishful thinking. To achieve success, our approach had to include a clearly defined direction, a disciplined doctrine/process, and above all else, a divine determination. Still, we needed someone to lay hands on us, or as I learned in SETX, someone whose endorsement could open doors one could not open alone…an influencer.


In today’s social culture, “friending” is an action verb, not to be confused with the more traditionally understood term of friendship. Friending has reciprocity, the practice of exchanging ideas and information with others for mutual benefit, allowing access, and sometimes, special privilege. Realizing that some efforts require access to people outside of a typical network, it is wise to “friend up” with leaders, or people with great influence.


When we finalized our proposal, we identified an influential community leader with whom we had an established relationship and pitched it to him. His immediate response was simply, iron sharpens iron. After a moment of reflection, he explained the mutual benefits, or synergies, that emerge when two blades rub together. The edges of the blades become sharper and more effective for the good works to be performed. Our children need more real world exposure to jobs and career opportunities available and our approach provided a hands-on, vocational, and valuable solution.

http://www.latrobellc.com/industrial-people.php

I still prefer face-to-face fellowship and meetings. In today’s social climate, I still value relationships and friendships, and feel that regardless of the size of the professional or civic network, people do business with those that they know and trust. I am guilty of “friending” to gain access to ideas and information, but my journey has revealed that no one achieves such alone. Iron sharpens iron, which sharpens our ability to deliver real value and mutual benefits in our purposed work. Who are you influencing by your good works? Feel free to comment, or, send me an email at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. If you like this post and want to catch up on some of my previous discussions, please visit the full Purposed Work blog at http://ltr-latrobe-mfg.blogspot.com/.