Communications, Media & Strategy Gavel

In about two weeks ago, I had the opportunity of anchoring a reunion meeting for my Alma matter where I did my undergraduate studies. As the custom is, during most reunion meetings, each person has opportunity to introduce him/herself to the group. The first thing that dawn on me was that many still do not still have a sellable personal elevator speech in this age and time. Personal selling speech is ‘insanely’ important today because it tells people at a glance who you are.

May be one day we will focus on that here. Most people that I listened to confused this great personal marketing tool with what their job titles are and  what their companies are offering.

Personally, though I learnt a great  lesson that day as a professional. Because I assumed this gathering brings together graduates who have left college for years and most of whom are gainfully employed, I played the expert game when it came to my turn to introduce myself.

Ideally on a good day, my elevator speech runs like this: I am Yinka Olaito. I help individuals, organizations to maximize values in their brands/ideas through adequate positioning of their brands to the target audience that can pay premium. My competitive advantage is in developing engaging strategy that turns customers to advocates .I am a multi-skilled individual who combines passion with right skills to make my unique difference. If there is time, I now add those skills I use that you can find here.

With the assumption that I am talking to learned persons that they are, I just used my usual byline above. The chorus of: ha ha, ha ha, caught my attention and I was wondering what I did wrong. The truth I learnt was that, while using your elevator speech, look around at your audience and break it down to their levels incase you may be sounding too big to the people you want to sell yourself to. I learnt that day to look around and see whether I need to simplify my elevator speech based on the environment. I immediately coined a simpler one for audience that may find the above too big to comprehend. So here is what I came out with: I am yinka olaito, I help individuals, organizations create, find opportunities that give them vantage position .Do you agree with me, can you share your own experience in this regard?