I’ve written many blogs about how to deliver a great elevator pitch. Your elevator pitch is the icebreaker that allows you to have a productive conversation with virtually anyone you meet. After you’ve delivered your elevator pitch and started a conversation, do yourself a favor by taking a moment to visualize the outcome of where you want the conversation to end up.
Why is visualization important? Because if you simply go where the conversation leads you without any forethought about the end goal, you wind up in a meandering conversation that wastes both your time and that of the person with whom you’re speaking.
Based on the information you know about the person you’re talking to, you should be able to determine the ideal outcome of the conversation. You can help navigate the conversation toward that end goal by preparing some conversation “building blocks” ahead of time. Here are some examples of building blocks that you can use to steer the conversation:
- Something about your company
- Something about a landmark client that you’ve worked with in their space
- Something about one of your experts who just helped execute a project for a client
Use these building blocks – and any others that you come up with – strategically based upon both what you see the person becoming most interested in and the ideal outcome that you’ve visualized in your mind.
