An elevator pitch that sells your business idea all the time!

Be it any field, movie, screenplay, or business, if you are looking for investors, you have to have an idea, and more importantly, a logline that is worth investing - else there is no sale. Logline is one or two sentences that explain the Movie/Business idea and is a way to clearly explain a complex idea. A winning pitch is all about a winning logline.

Hollywood screenwriters typically get just three to five minutes to pitch their movie ideas, but it takes only around 45 seconds for producers to analyze if they would want to invest in it or not. Similarly, Business leaders are often asked, What is your idea? What does your startup or product do? What do you have to offer? If they manage it to answer in one compelling sentence, they can hook their audience and convince investors to invest in their idea.

According to molecular biologist John Medina of the University of Washington School of Medicine, the human brain craves meaning before details. When a listener does not understand the overarching idea being presented in a pitch, they have a hard time digesting the information. A logline will help you paint the big picture for your audience.

But mastering the art of pitching and logline is not as easy. Communicating your point in a simple, digestible way is harder than you think. Though challenging it definitely is doable. Here are a few steps leaders can take to do so to influence people and make them invest in their business plans.

Being concise is the key

Michael Moritz, a venture capital investor In his book ‘Leading’, narrates the story of two Stanford graduate students who once walked into his office at Sequoia Capital and delivered the most concise business plan he had ever heard.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page told Moritz, “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible.” In exactly 10 words and 77 characters that logline led to Google’s first major round of funding. Moritz said the pitch was clear and had a sense of purpose.

A logline should be easy to say and easy to remember. As an exercise, challenge yourself to keep it under 140 characters because at 77 characters, the Google pitch hit the spot.

What do you want your audience to remember?

Your logline should capture that essence of your business idea that you would want your customers/investors to remember. The logline should have that “one thing” which would cater to the needs of your audience.

Steve Jobs is a genius at identifying the one thing he wants us to remember about a new product. In 2001 it was that the original iPod allowed you to carry “1,000 songs in your pocket.” In 2008 it was said that the MacBook Air was “the world’s thinnest notebook.” Apple still uses this strategy today. Executives repeat a one-sentence description when presenting new products.

Hit the bullseye

The best business pitch gets to the heart of the matter quickly in order to keep investors from losing interest or worse yet, thinking there's no point to the presentation. Get to the meat of the pitch as soon as possible without beating around the bush; if investors don't understand the idea right away, they'll think customers won’t understand it either.

Elevator pitch

You may want to consider starting with an elevator pitch, so named because it should be short enough to deliver during a brief elevator ride. It can introduce your business pitch and is handy if you stumble across a brief opportunity to sell your idea to a potential investor (for instance, imagine yourself riding to the tenth floor with the likes of Bill Gates and you have to make the most of those few minutes to impress him with your business idea).

Just like a logline, an elevator pitch is a concise and carefully planned description of your company or idea that can be quickly and easily understood. In a longer business pitch, the elevator pitch can be used as the hook: a line or two in your business writing that captures the attention of potential investors.

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