The Positioning Statement or Sales Meeting Elevator Speech
Before a client engages in a serious conversation about her business or legal concern, she might request a short description of what you do. She quite naturally wants to know who she is talking with so that she can decide whether or not it is worth the effort to describe her need in detail.
You must be careful to give her just enough information to make her comfortable that you are, indeed, the person to talk with. If you say too much, you may draw so much attention to yourself that she starts asking a lot of questions about you. If that happens, she may make the decision that you aren’t suited to her need, before you even learn what that need is.
In this situation you need a short, compelling description of what you do. In other words, an elevator speech. We call this kind a positioning statement. It is the most variable of the three kinds of elevator speeches I described earlier, because selling situations differ. Let’s look at how a location consultant might alter his positioning statement to accommodate different selling situations. Just for starters:
The client may know nothing about either him or his firm: We help companies select locations for new facilities. My personal specialty is selecting sites for research laboratories like the one that I understand you need to build. We have helped companies as diverse as Trigestis Pharmaceuticals, Permian Oil and SnackTime Foods select laboratory locations. We look at recruitment of researchers, customer interaction, incentives and any other critical factor that varies with geography.
The client may know you and your firm for one service, when you are selling another: You know us mostly for our location selection work. Many of the companies we work with also seek our help in moving to that new location. We help develop employee relocation policies, employee communication plans, plans for moving furniture and lab equipment and other critical elements of getting a lab up and running on time and on budget. We provide these services to well over half of our location selection clients.
The client may know you and your firm, but not the colleague who has come with you: I have brought Chris Browne with me today, because you asked about the potential to obtain incentives from communities we are considering for your new lab. Chris leads our negotiation practice and negotiates on everything from tax reductions to site infrastructure improvements and from lease costs to the size of subsidies for training new personnel.
After providing a positioning statement, you want to ask a question that will get the client talking about her need. That’s who we are. Perhaps you could tell us a bit about the lab in question and why you are thinking of relocating it.
Remember that the goal of the positioning statement is to give the client just enough information that she will feel comfortable talking about her issue. You aren’t trying to sell her anything yet. You aren’t trying to differentiate your firm from all of the possible competitors. You just want to give her enough information to make her feel it’s worth telling you what she wants.
After she tells you what she wants, you can tell her why yours is the best firm to solve her problem and how you differ from her alternatives. But not now. Now you listen.
(For more, see our category on elevator speeches.)