In keeping with yesterday’s blog about creating memorable and repeatable elevator pitches, your pitch should also adhere to the “rule of three.” If you’re not familiar with the “rule of three,” it’s the concept that people are comfortable with things that are grouped in threes. I’m sure you can all think of numerous real-world examples of this concept – “Location, location, location,” “Lights, camera, action,” “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” “Three blind mice,” and so forth.
So, what does this mean for your elevator pitch? When you’re coming up with pitches, make sure you don’t list more than three things. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you don’t want to have more than three things. After the third thing, your listener will likely trend toward “stack overflow” and only remember the last three items you mention.
If you want to get creative, you could choose three words that have a nice ring to them. Your audience would appreciate it, and your pitch would become more easily engrained in their memory.
While I encourage you to explore how you might work this concept into your pitches, don’t feel as if you have to list three things. You can have a great pitch without listing anything at all, as in the example I offered yesterday about the “Building Whisperer.” Just don’t overwhelm your audience with a list that contains more than three elements.
