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Elevator pitch – everyone’s heard of this. This is surely useful at startup pitches and career networking. This concept is also useful for communicating updates on pilots because it declutters the mind and focuses everyone’s attention on what really matters. 

As I reflect on situations when I had to craft the 30 second message, first I have had to pause (sometimes testing the patience of the people around me). 

And then I ask myself these questions:

  1. What is the customer’s objective? 
  2. What do I know (or can learn) about their business?
  3. How does working with us help them? What’s the silver lining or reason for optimism, even when there’s a ton of challenges?  
  4. When they receive the message, what emotion will they express and to what degree?  
  5. What are the simplest words in English to tell the facts and also address the emotion? 

Thinking about these questions gives me a better idea of how to set up the message. Now to a couple of examples. 

This is an example of a positive message: 

We have good news to share. The product is demonstrating 18% lift in revenue. The lift is statistically significant. We are facing a challenge in the X segment. Our plan is to tune our algorithm for this segment. So we see a path to getting to 25% lift, which translates to $X incremental revenue. We thank you for partnering on this pilot. We can go into the details. 

Below is an example of a tough message: 

This will be a tough conversation for us. We had both agreed to complete the pilot over X weeks. Unfortunately we have faced difficulties related to Z (or we made a mistake). We’d like to propose an extension of Y weeks and offer a credit because we feel the $X “prize” is there for the taking. We are sorry for the delay and appreciate your partnering with us and allowing us the extension. We can go into the specifics.  

The 30 second message can then be put into the right medium – a conversation, an email update, or an executive summary in a slide deck (Tough messages are best in person; never by email). That’s the easy part. The hard part is crafting the 30 second message, and it is worth the time it takes. As the philosopher, John Locke, cautioned, let’s not be “too lazy, or too busy to make it shorter”.