ELEVATOR SPEECH WORKSHEET

Be clear and brief

This worksheet automatically analyzes your text for clarity using algorithms like the Flesch score.  Green means very clear, orange means less clear, red means unclear. To increase clarity, use shorter sentences and shorter words. Also, try to stay within the character number limits.

Example: “Hello, my name is Jane Doe.”

I am.

Example:  “I’m the chief advancement officer at Coal to Green.”

Example: “Our mission is to create opportunity in coal country.”

Use conversational language that would work to explain your work to a 14-year-old. Don’t just copy and paste the mission statement off your Website. Avoid mumbo-jumbo and expert language.

Don’t crowd this with information about how you accomplish your goal. Stay focused on the outcome.

Prime your listeners by beginning with a dramatic signpost phrase followed by a pause. For example: “Listen, we’re facing the challenge of our life time.” [PAUSE]

Then, summarize the problem / challenges in 10 or so seconds.

Right after the summary, give a highly specific and shocking example for the challenges.

Follow the example with a sentence that begins with “Just thinking of this makes me feel so [use an action oriented emotion like “angry” or “worried” and not stifling feelings like “depressed” or “disappointed”]

Wrap up this segment with a sentence that begins with the words “What’s ultimately at stake here is…”. Don’t just repeat your mission but zoom out higher. Give people goosebumps.

Use another signpost phrase so your listeners know you’re shifting to talking about the solution. For example: “So, here’s what we do at XYZ organization.” [PAUSE]

Summarize your solution in 10 or so seconds. For example, if you work in three areas, say: “Our work falls into three buckets: A, B, and C.”

After the “solution summary,” give a highly specific and fascinating example for one of the things you do. Choose one that will be most interesting to your audience. Begin with words like “here’s an example I’m especially excited / proud about.”

Use the example to highlight what’s unique about your organization by finishing a sentence like: “This example illustrates an important aspect that is unique to our work, which is…”

Instill confidence by listing a few well-known partners and / or important past successes. Use a signpost phrase like: “We have some well-known partners / we have had remarkable successes.”

Keep this to no more than 10-15 seconds.

Use another signpost phrase so your listeners know you’re shifting to talking about why the work is personal to you. For example: “This work is personal to me because…”

The key goal here is to share not a success but a foundational “pain point experience,” and to mention how it made or makes you feel. This could be an experience in your past that set you on your path, or it could be the experience of witnessing the hardship of those whom you serve today.

It’s extremely important to keep this short and focused on just one experience

Remember to mention the emotion in conjunction with the experience, for example: “anxious” or “angry” (your goal is to lower your guard so that your audience will do likewise and you have an empathic connection)

Pivot away from this short segment by using the following or a similar phrase: “But it’s not about me. What’s really at stake, as I said, is…”

Example:

For example, just last week, 3 million homes in Northern California went dark because the power company had to shut down the power to prevent wildfires. At the same time, fossil-fuel dependent power plants are heating up our planet. It all happens faster than the worst predictions. Scientists now fear the climate could change within decades instead of centuries. It’s a do-or-die situation.

Example:

We offer an inexpensive and easy solution for producing your own green energy.

Example:

Just twenty of our solar panels are enough to power a small business operation, like a dentist office. We make switching easy. For example, installing one of our panels only takes thirty minutes. All you need is a Phillips-head screwdriver. You can do it all by yourself. And because our battery system uses a novel form of Lithium Ion, you’ll be able to keep the lights and ACs on even at night.

Example:

The State of California recently bought 1,000 of our solar sets for a test installation in Sacramento. Inc Magazine named us among its Top 100 Planet Savers.

Example:

Climate change is personal to me. My parents lost their home in the 2018 Camp Fire, California’s worst wildfire in history. This was my childhood home. They are lucky to still be alive. And now they live in a temporary home whose power gets shut down almost every other week.

Example:

As I said, it’s a do or die situation. So we are doing something.

Example:

One thing you can do is visit superdupersolarpanels.com. And if you see me standing around during the breaks at this conference, please come up and say hello.

Click “Save as Word” to download your Message House in Microsoft Word format.