Ivory tower-wise, what is an elevator speech? Let’s first examine its purposes in higher education and then its salient characteristics.
ACADEMIC PURPOSES
In higher education, professors are not selling a product. Instead, they are promoting, to some degree, themselves as teachers, researchers, or clinicians, their scholarship, and their institutions. They’re selling their professionalism.
As an academician, the primary purposes of the elevator speech are to build professional relationships in:
1. your teaching strategies or discipline
2. your research area
3. your clinical specialty
4. anything I forgot
Got it? Certainly, those of you who are in recruit mode may use that opportunity to entice faculty, administrators, or students to your institutional lair.
WHAT IS AN ELEVATOR SPEECH?
So what is this speech all about compared to what you’re already doing?
DEFINITION: It is a concise, carefully-crafted, and well-rehearsed description about “Who you are” and “What you can do for the contact” that your mother would understand, delivered in the time it would take to ride up or down to your hotel floor in an elevator. (Note: If your room is on a low level floor, you’ll have to talk really fast.)
It shifts the emphasis away from you and your credentials, which are already visible on your nametag, to what you can do for the person to whom you’re talking. Rather than promoting you and describing what you do, it’s about spinning what you do for the benefit of that person. And, certainly, who is in a better position to write and deliver that speech than you? Well, maybe your mommy.
CHARACTERISTICS: It’s just a short, mini-spiel, sound-bite of 30–60 seconds to succinctly and memorably introduce you to people or livestock you don’t know. Granted, for professors to speak less than a minute can be an excruciatingly painful, restrictive, and nearly impossible task, especially when they’re talking about their fave subject. It’s like a 100-word abstract (5–8 sentences) of YOU to spotlight your uniqueness and how you can help the contact. Is there any characteristic worth mentioning that distinguishes you from the rest of the pack?
What is the role of the elevator as well other modes of transportation? What constitutes an appropriate elevator speech? What are the key ingredients that will make a lasting first impression and showcase you as a professional? Stay tuned.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
In academia as well as the trade marketplace, subject lines in e-mails and titles of newsletters, blogs, journal articles, books, and conference presentations are typically business-as-usual, gag-in-the-throat boring, albeit scholarly, pretentious, and possibly difficult to understand. Of course, there are occasional exceptions, and those outliers are welcome breaths of fresh words.
STOPABILITY
There are so many electronic and paper communications; so little time. How do you stand out from the rest of the pack in an already super-overcrowded field, such as hundreds of e-mails to scan or 10–30 other concurrent conference presentations in the same time slot as yours? Instead of gagging, we need to be grabbing or throttling our readers’ throats with a title that stops them in their tracks. Your criterion for an effective title should be STOPABILITY. Create a stop for the pause that entices your readers to read. E-mail-wise, you have about a nanosecond to stop them before they hit DELETE.
How do you create a sizzling title for any professional message or document that may still be boring? At least, your reader may start reading before deleting.
EIGHT STRATEGIES FOR SIZZLING TITLES
Here are 8 strategies to consider from the world of marketing and advertising with my academic spin. Your title should convey the following:
1. Tell me what you can do for me. How can your title convey that your content will help me be a better teacher, researcher, business leader, manager, conference presenter, faculty developer, writer, or mousetrap? As a student, does your title suggest how you are going to help me finish my dissertation, present a paper, or get a job?
2. Tell me something I don’t already know. Adopt the cynical mindset of some of your colleagues and make sure your title doesn’t connote you’re recycling same ole same ole. The title should suggest what unique, new, meaningful contribution you are providing?
3. Keep it simple, succinct, and precise. We’ve all heard of the KISS model (Keep It Simple Stupid). This is the KISSPCS version (pronounced “Kisspicks”) if you retain the Stupid part. Apply it to your title. Carefully choose every word so that it precisely captures your message. Be terse and clear with your language. Whack unnecessary words.
OOPS! I’ve blogged past my word limit. I’m so embarrassed and ashamed of myself. What was I thinking? Please forgive me. The list of strategies will be continued tomorrow. Can you guess the other ways you can make your titles sizzle? Maybe you use techniques I haven’t tried. Please let me know your ideas.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
