Pushing your customers’ buttons

On a recent train journey, I was sat behind a jovial group of tech bods. They were talking about their ‘elevator pitch’.

Here’s what they said

Tech bod #1: So an elevator pitch is what we’d say to someone about what we do, if we met them in a lift?

Tech bod #2: Yeah. It has to be short and sweet, so you could say it all in a quick elevator ride.

Tech bod #1 (jokingly): But we’ve got so much to say. We’d have to press all the buttons!

Tech bod #2 (laughing): And they’d hate you for it.

That got me thinking. Because we see this all the time in writing. Businesses focus on what they want the reader to know, not what the reader really wants to know.

They press all the buttons in the lift

That’s a problem. Do that and you’re metaphorically holding your readers hostage. You’re literally wasting their time with information they’re not interested in. And you know it.

When you want to talk about your business, it’s not about what you do and how you do it. It’s about what you can do for your audience. Sounds obvious, but we’ve all come across those button-pressing businesses.

Our advice: next time you need to pitch your business, pick a floor and stick to it.