An elevator pitch is a 30-90 second summary of what it is that you do. It’s designed to put your services across in an impactful, concise way to anyone that only has a short amount of time to listen. The elevator pitch found its bearings as a tool to use during networking events to help you quickly explain your services to fellow networkers.
But how can this help your landscaping business? For what it’s worth, there isn’t a huge culture of networking in the industry, and the networking that does happen s usually from landscaper-to-landscaper at events such as futurescape, rather than landscaper-to-consumer, so what exactly is the point of an elevator pitch for a landscaper?
It’s simple: by sitting down and crafting your own pitch, you will find it will help you really hone in on what you want to offer, which subsequently will help you improve the rest of your marketing materials.
The Elevate Profit “elevator pitch”
When asked what they do, people love giving wishy-washy answers. “I’m the global lead for development” or “I’m a senior events advisor”. Are you any clearer on what they do? Will those descriptions help you realise you might need their services? Absolutely not! When someone asks you what you or your business does, you need to have a concise, clear answer where the people who hear it will be very clear on what you offer, and whether it is for them.
Visualise it this way - if someone asked me what I did, I could say something like this “I’m the founder and CEO of a financial service consultancy” - technically it’s accurate, but I was bored of it before I’d even finished typing. This isn't going to help people see how you can help them, let alone get them interested in learning more. It’s dry, faceless and unhelpful. You need something better than a vague title, you need to explain what you do, how it helps people and then give examples of how you have helped people achieve this.
Here’s my elevator pitch:
“You know how landscapers often struggle to know what to pay themselves at the end of the month? We solve that problem by working with them to implement a perfect pricing process and a fool-proof cash-flow management system so they know how much they can afford to pay themselves at any time. In fact, one of our clients increased their take-home pay by £8,000 from 2019 to 2020 after following our systems!”
See how clear that is? See how it highlights the problem we solve, how it explains exactly how we help people and how it demonstrates the results they can get? It’s exactly what you need to craft for your own business.
The “elevator pitch” formula
The main thing that sets a good elevator pitch apart from a part one, is that a good pitch isn't self focused. It should be focused on the results of your service you offer and how you help your clients. Just being able to craft an elevator pitch like the above means you’ll be able to perfect what you are offering by narrowing it down into something specific.
The formula to craft your very own elevator pitch is:
“You know [the problem you solve] well, what we do is [how you solve that problem]. In fact, [proof or recent example of how you solved that problem]”
Completing this for your own company can shed a lot of light on your offering, and when you are clear on what you are offering, then it becomes easier to sell to your potential customers.
Using your USP in your “elevator pitch”
When you are putting together your elevator pitch, it’s important to focus it on your USP. If you haven’t already put together your USP, you can read our article on how to do that here.
Once you’ve got your USP in place, you’ll know what unique service you are selling to potential customers, and it’s time to put this into a complete elevator pitch.
Your USP could be creating wellness spaces, or specialising in low-to-no maintenance spaces. Whatever it is, you need to focus your elevator pitch around it.
A generic pitch would go something like this:
“I’m a landscaper gardener, and I makeover peoples gardens so they look much better”
It may be true, but it’s uninspiring and can be massively improved for maximum impact. How about this for comparison:
“You know how spending time outdoors is good for your mental health? Well, what we do is we transform our clients gardens into an outdoor wellness space. Encouraging them to spend more time outdoors year round, improving their health and well-being. In fact, we won a health & wellness award in 2020 for our wellness spaces.”
Or even
“You know how people can find the constant need to tend their gardens a bit overwhelming? Well, what we do is we transform their gardens into low-to-no maintenance spaces by replacing all the high-labour elements, with sustainable, long-lasting, low-maintenance elements, meaning they can spend more time enjoying their space, and less time working in it! In fact, our last client was sick of cleaning their patio every time it rained, so we replaced it with ultra-low maintenance porcelain, so now it looks brand-new year round.”
Can you see how much clearer, more engaging and more specific the bottom two examples are? People who want to spend more time outdoors, or who don’t like garden work will feel like your pitch is speaking to them directly. This is great for a huge number of reasons:
- You can charge better prices, as people feel you are a specialist in solving their problems.
- It’s easier to identify the customers who will waste your time as they do not want your service
And all the time you’ve spent developing this elevator pitch, is time you’ve spent crafting what exactly it is you want to offer. For those that want to be a jack-of-all, it may not seem like specialising is for you, which is fine. But for those that want to command higher prices, with less push-back, it’s wise to figure out exactly what it is you want to offer, and who you want to offer it to - and creating an elevator pitch is the perfect way to start!
