The Life of the Unemployed Professional: The Pitch

After over a decade in sales and marketing, I have learned that a story is everything. A compelling, interesting, meaningful story will engage your audience, draw them in, and can make them fall in love with you. 

On the flip side, an unorganized list of bullet points, a rambling narrative without direction, or an unrelatable tale can do more harm than good. 

An elevator pitch is a statement that tells a high level summary of who you are and what you offer within 20 seconds (or the time it takes to ride in an elevator). As any good sales person will tell you, this is key to getting past the first introduction and can either make you or break you.

Articulate. Concise. Descriptive. Smooth. Flexible. These are all the ways you can describe a good elevator pitch. But that doesn't really help you. You probably know this already. What might be helpful is a couple best practices in developing your own elevator pitch that will draw people in, make you relatable and get you past the initial hello.

Lets start with Articulate. 

Think about your audience for a moment. There will be moments when you are with "your people". Industry functions, trade shows, company parties. These are all times that you can use your big MBA words and industry jargon. But then there will also be those times that you will be around the rest of us. Us simpletons that have no idea what it is that you do and will not understand the acronyms that you use all day, every day. This is such an important distinction. In fact, this is best practice number one. Think the engineer talking to the attorney. Two smart people; just smart in different areas. Being articulate is more than flowery words. It is about being relatable and understandable by the audience you are in front of. 

Concise: 

As you work towards taking all the years and all the experiences you have gone through it can seem overwhelming to narrow that down to just a couple sentences. In developing mine, I listed out all the different areas that I have experience in. I allowed this list to continue to growth over a few days. What are you good at, what do you enjoy? List out as many as possible. Reference your resume, ask those that are close to you; get yourself a list of 20. 

Next you will find that some of those skills start to lump together into a general category. For example on my list, inbound lead generation, digital marketing and email marketing can all be summarized into Lead Generation or Marketing Automation. I have to remember, though, unless I am speaking to fellow marketers, that might not mean anything to my audience. So alternatively, I call it "finding the right potential customers and and making sure they are a good fit." Categorize all your skills into the top three high level skills you have and adjust those skills to the audience. Remember, no more than 20 seconds!

Descriptive: 

There are two best practices when it comes to being descriptive. Allow for understanding and make it about the customer. What is wrong with this statement?

"I analyze BI and look for trends that become content I push using marketing automation software to pre-identified targets and key KOLs to generate leads for a field team."

Crickets.... right?  This is an extreme example, but we all do it. We all have acronyms or terms that make perfect sense to us, but have no meaning to those outside of our world. Additionally, This is about what I do, not about what my clients get out of it. Compare that statement with the one below: 

"I am a sales and marketing leader that uses new and innovative tools to better identify the potential customers that are more likely to buy. and Those leads are then passed over the to sales team so that they have more direction on who to target and who will purchase." 

See the difference? I have taken industry jargon, transitioned it to a generalized conversation and included the benefit the audience gets from the work. 

As a side point here. Sometimes we try to be smart instead of relatable. We all do it. Somehow, we feel that if we are able to use the biggest words possible so that no one understands us, we will come across better than if we are relatable and understandable. Overcome the urge to show off your big brain and just be a nice, articulate person. 

Smooth:

Practice, Practice, and more practice. In front of a mirror. To your spouse or best friend. To your favorite barista at Starbuck. The more you say it, but more comfortable you will be with it. Do you know how you get smooth? you guessed it. Practice. Enough said on this one. 

Flexible: 

Adjust your pitch as needed and be flexible to learn what will work the best. In marketing, we call this A/B testing. A practical example of how we use A/B testing is in email marketing. Did you know that almost every email that fills your inbox from some company has had two versions, slightly tweaked, of the same email? Companies send both versions to a segment of their intended audience and they watch the response. How many opens, how many clicks to a website, so on. If you get a better response with version A over version B, then you move forward with version A. Then you make a slight tweak again, send two versions out and watch what happens and, once again, go with the most successful version. 

You can do the same thing with your elevator pitch. Use two different versions. Try them both out at a party. If one seems to connect better with your audience, run with it! Ditch the other version and now you have a slightly better version to move forward with. 

An elevator pitch is your first impression. It is your chance to connect and show that you are someone that should be recommended. That you are confident and will be an asset to any company. Remember, Articulate. Concise. Descriptive. Smooth. Flexible. I feel like that should have been an acronym. 

Keep Climbing

John

About me: 

My name is John Constantine and I am a executive leader of sales and marketing. As a sales leader I have driven organic growth from $4M-$65M through building a highly successful sales team. As a marketing executive, I have directed rebranding initiatives, developed websites and print collateral and designed/implemented various marketing campaigns using digital tools to score and track leads. In everything I do in my corporate life, I drive growth through supporting and improving the efficiencies of the sales team. Personally, I am passionate about giving back to the world; whether it is a church plant in Colombia, South America or helping to develop the go to market strategy for a hospital in Rwanda, Africa, I feel that we are called to service. Additionally, I extend my desire to go above and beyond in a very real way through my mountaineering and backpacking treks. In 2016 I summited Mt Rainier in Washington State and now I train for an Alaska expedition in Denali and a possible fundraising climb of Kilimanjaro.  

To learn more, go to http://www.johnaconstantine.com/

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Lessons from the mountain #4: Problems can make you sore or make you soar.

Welcome to the final installment of my four part series, "Lessons from the Mountain". If this is your first time here, I welcome you to visit my previous posts. I have been highlighting the lessons that were learned through my mountaineering experience that seem to be applicable on the ground in the business world as well. Each week, I have highlighted a simple little truth that hopefully will allow you to maintain a positive perspective; regardless of what you are going through at work! 

Lesson #4: 

All struggles are only problems if you allow them to be. You can view struggles as reasons that you may not be successful or they can be opportunities for personal growth and the catalysts for developing the tools that will guarantee success. I cannot yet quantify all the different areas I developed and how much I grew during the year of training and throughout the actual climb, but I can tell you that I am a different man. I have grown mentally, emotionally, physically and intellectually through the process.

So it is with your struggle at work. All struggles are opportunities for growth. I don't know who said it first, and if you know, tell me so I can give credit where credit is due, but it has been said, "You never find the best version of yourself inside your comfort zone". I can personally attest that I have found the best version of myself, and it was somewhere up on that mountain during the hardest of struggles. 

I encourage each one of you to continue to push forward, embrace the awkwardness of personal growth, and look forward to the better version of yourself that you will find on the other side of whatever struggle you are working through today, this week, this month, and this year. You will like the results; I know I do. 

Keep climbing and check in again next week as I start a new series!

John

About the author:

My name is John Constantine and I am a sales and marketing executive living in suburban Atlanta. Throughout my career, I have been able to drive growth repeatedly in a variety of capacities. As a sales leader, I have built, expanded, and improved high performing teams to promote expansion and profitability. As a marketing executive, I have led teams in the creation and launching of new brands and products. I have managed inbound lead generation campaigns and created online and print branding standards that stand out from the pack and engage employees to take pride in their organization. As an executive of strategic initiatives and a field operations leader, I have implemented programs and processes that have differentiated my organizations and provided predictable revenue forecasting to the C-suite; all the while increasing productivity and accountability of the front-line team members in the organization. 

 To learn more, go to http://www.johnaconstantine.com/

Lessons From The Mountain #3: A Mountain Lesson on Work Life Balance

Over the last few weeks, I have been highlighting the lessons that have been learned through my mountaineering experience that are applicable on the ground in the business world. Each week, I have discussed a simple little truth that hopefully allows you to maintain a positive perspective; regardless of what you are going through at work. I hope you enjoy week three. Feel free to comment and share. 

Lesson #3: 

Save some for the return. While on the mountain, it is so easy to set your sights on the top and convince yourself that the summit is your goal. But what any seasoned mountaineer will tell you is that the summit is only halfway. Your goal is always making it back down and making it home. In every case of climbing, the return trip is the hardest and most demanding but the most overlooked. You have expelled your energy on the way to the top and now, with your energy depleted, you run the risk of a misstep, a simple error or a fall that could cause serious injury; possibly death. You need unbelievable focus despite what you have just achieved. This is often the part of the climb that is overlooked while driving forward, step after step towards the top.

It struck me as I was making my way down Mt Rainier this year that this is a great analogy for the balance between my home life, and my professional life. For way too many years, I focused almost exclusively on the "summit" of my career, be that a title, a project, or a dollar figure. And the return trip, my time at home, was neglected. I hadn't left enough in the tank for the ones that loved me. For those of us that are naturally prone to "workaholism", this can be easy to do and, if we are honest with ourselves, this is a common pitfall of all of us. 

All too often, we get tunnel vision around our careers, and we forget that we are to be just as focused on the return; our personal life. Emails creep into dinner. Conference calls interrupt our kids' soccer and baseball games and and our thoughts are filled with the dealings of our profession while they should be focused on the beautiful (or handsome) person we are walking through life with. We have distractions and those distractions erode into the focus that we should be giving to those that we love. As in mountaineering, this lack of focus and weariness is where the injuries can and do most often occur. 

This is not to say that our professional goals should be decreased and our drive should disappear. In fact, for those of you that are christian, it is written in Colossians 3: 23, "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men." It is a biblical principle that we are to be motivated, and driven, and that we should seek excellence in all that we do. We should still drive for the top, but we need to learn to train ourselves to achieve our own professional summit while leaving enough for the personal trip home. The return trip should not take away from our drive towards the summit. You just need to prepare adequately for the round trip; the full package.

Here are a couple quick ways that you can save some in the tank for those you love. 

1. Quiet your world for 5 minutes before walking through the door. Give yourself 5 minutes of time with no traffic, no calls, no email, no distractions to think about the things that you are most looking forward to as you walk through the front door, our out of your home office. Communicate what you are most looking forward to, to your family. "Tonight, I can't wait to....  .... with y'all!"

2. Invest and train in your personal health. If you are going to operate at your best in all you do, you can't do it without proper training. Exercise is not just about looking better in your suit. It will calm your mind, increase your stamina and allow more focus into your life. Summits can never be reached without proper training. 

3. Talk openly at home when you have a heads up that work will increase for a time and that times of stress will be coming. Explain why you need to take this extra work on and align personal goals through this season with professional ones. Often, we know in advance that a season of extra work is coming, but we fail to communicate that at home in advance. We see that budget season is upon us. Or that a new client will be coming on board, or that someone key is off work and we all need to step in to assist in the extra work created. Get your spouse involved in the process and communicate those times in advance and together as a team you can manage through the rough times. 

4. Practice your profession. Just as I was the weirdo jogging up and down the hills of my neighborhood with my pack on while training for the mountain, so you should be practicing your profession. Not great at reading a P&L, ask for help. Don't have the product knowledge you feel you should? Take someone out for coffee that knows. Don't know how to manage an Excel file properly? Take a class. The list of opportunities for training and improvement are everywhere and an increase in knowledge will decrease the emotional energy you expel on stress of the unknown leaving more for those that are at home. The longer you operate as if you are not living up to your true potential, both at home, and at the office, the more emotionally drained you will be. 

As you go through your day today, remember, the time you spend at your desk, on the phone, in the board room or with your customers, is just half the journey. You need to have balance in your life. If you use up all your energy during your day gig on your way to the summit, you will have nothing left in the tank for those that you share life with at home. What are some best practices you have learned to keep some energy in the tank for your return trip?

Keep climbing and check in next week as we end this series with the importance of a positive perspective. 

John

About the author:

My name is John Constantine and I am a sales and marketing executive living in suburban Atlanta. Throughout my career, I have been able to drive growth repeatedly in a variety of capacities. As a sales leader, I have built, expanded, and improved high performing teams to promote expansion and profitability. As a marketing executive, I have led teams in the creation and launching of new brands and products. I have managed inbound lead generation campaigns and created online and print branding standards that stand out from the pack and engage employees to take pride in their organization. As an executive of strategic initiatives and a field operations leader, I have implemented programs and processes that have differentiated my organizations and provided predictable revenue forecasting to the C-suite; all the while increasing productivity and accountability of the front-line team members in the organization. 

 To learn more, go to http://www.johnaconstantine.com/