Passing Escalators

Hello friends and future millionaires. 

My name is Kris Hutchinson. 

Don asked me to come in and share with you a little bit about what to say when someone asks “What is it that you do?” 

It used to be, 20 or 30 years ago, you would develop your “elevator pitch”.

That was when you walked into an elevator and someone asked you, “What do you do?”  You had the length of time during that ride in the elevator to get your idea out and to make them understand it.

Nowadays, with so many distractions, you don’t have that kind of time. 

Now it’s more like you’re riding an escalator and the person that you want to talk to is riding the escalator in the opposite direction.

So while you’re going up, they’re actually coming down, and you only have that split second to tell someone about your idea.

Our goal in that short time is to let someone know exactly what it is that you do with enough intrigue that when they get to the top of the escalator they turn around and come back down so they can ask you more questions about it. 

So the way that we do that is simple; You have two sentences and that’s about it. 

That’s about all the time that you’re going to have to get your message out, so in those two sentences, you need to tell them:

• Who you are
• What problems you solve for people
• What results you can get for people
• And specifically, who do you get those results for

So for example, I would say:  “Hi, my name is Kris Hutchinson. I get ______ results for _____ kinds of people.” 

And that’s it! That’s all the time that you have to catch someone’s attention. 

The way it works is, if I see myself as one of those people that you’re talking about getting results for, right away you’ve got my attention. 

“Hi, my name is Kris Hutchinson and I solve this problem for people who like Star Wars.” 

The other person may think, “Hey, I like Star Wars; Maybe I have that problem.”

Now you’ve got their attention and now they’re actively listening. 

When people know your target audience, they can also refer friends/family to you or refer you to people they know need your services.

For example, if the problem you solve is to get rid of pests in people’s houses as an exterminator, a conversation may result in “Well, wait a minute. My neighbor has pests in his house and might want to talk to you.”

If people know the audience that you serve, or if they know people with the problem that you solve, right away that’s going to get their attention. 

Now, when I’ve done this exercise with our clients, oftentimes we discover that their products or services can solve a lot of different problems for a lot of different people. 

And that’s great but you need to really narrow it down and be very specific.

For example, if you say to somebody “This herbal supplement that I have can solve all kinds of health problems for men and women” well, that’s great, but that doesn’t tell me anything detailed. 

I don’t have all kinds of health problems; I might just have high blood pressure and wonder how’s that gonna help me? 

There wasn’t enough explanation to capture the audience which is why when you’re doing this exercise you really need to focus on the one main problem that you solve. 

In that case, it should be the one that will get the greatest results. 

Also, try to be more specific with the audience that you’re trying to reach, by asking questions to narrow down your scope.

Here’s another example: 

• Does your product work for women or is it mostly men? 
• If it’s mostly men, is it men over 40? 
• Are you targeting single men or married men? 
• Is it men who have had a certain experience? 
• Do you only want to work with college graduates because those are the people that you can get the best results for? 

So those are just a few things to think about when explaining what it is that you do. 

That’s all I’ve got for now.