Elevator Pitch Builder
Five prompts about your audience and product, one assembly formula, and two worked examples, enough to walk away with a practiced 30-second pitch in one sitting.
How to use it
Answer the 5 prompts in writing first, drop your answers into the formula sentence, then read it aloud against the delivery checklist and time it until it lands under 30 seconds.
What's inside
- 5 build prompts (Who / Problem / What you do / Outcome / Differentiator)
- Assembly formula sentence template
- Worked example, B2B SaaS (mid-market ops software)
- Worked example, field sales (industrial equipment)
- 5-item delivery checklist
- 3 stress-test questions to check real differentiation
Answer the 5 prompts honestly and specifically (avoid jargon), then run your answers through the assembly formula below to get your 30-second pitch.
Step 1: Answer the 5 prompts
Prompt 1, WHO do you help? Be specific: not "businesses," but the actual role/company type/segment. Your answer: _______________________
Prompt 2, What PROBLEM are they dealing with? State it the way THEY would say it, not how your product brochure says it. Your answer: _______________________
Prompt 3, What do you actually DO (in plain terms)? One sentence, no acronyms, no internal product names unless well known. Your answer: _______________________
Prompt 4, What OUTCOME do they get? Ideally quantified: time saved, revenue gained, risk removed, cost cut. Your answer: _______________________
Prompt 5, What makes you DIFFERENT? Compared to doing nothing, a competitor, or an internal workaround. Your answer: _______________________
Step 2: Assemble it with the formula
"I help [WHO] who are dealing with [PROBLEM] to [OUTCOME] by [WHAT YOU DO]: unlike [ALTERNATIVE], we [DIFFERENTIATOR]."
Target length: 65–85 words (≈30 seconds spoken at a natural pace).
Step 3: Two worked examples
B2B SaaS (mid-market ops software): "I help operations leaders at 200–2,000 person companies who are drowning in manual approval workflows get decisions made in hours instead of days, by automating routing and sign-off in the tools they already use. Unlike generic workflow builders, we ship with the approval logic for finance, procurement and HR already built in: so you're live in a week, not a quarter."
Field sales (industrial equipment): "I help plant managers who are losing production time to unplanned downtime keep their lines running longer between failures, by putting predictive sensors on the equipment that fails most often. Unlike a scheduled-maintenance calendar, we tell you which machine to check this week, not just when the calendar says to."
Step 4: Delivery checklist
- Read it aloud: if you run out of breath before the end, cut a clause
- Time it: if it's over 30 seconds, remove qualifiers and adjectives first
- Remove every acronym a stranger at a bus stop wouldn't know
- Say it to a colleague outside sales: if they can repeat the outcome back, it works
- Practice 3 versions: formal (exec), casual (peer/networking), written (LinkedIn bio)
Step 5: Stress-test questions
Ask yourself: if you can't answer these, revisit Prompt 5:
- Could a competitor say this exact pitch word-for-word? If yes, it's not differentiated enough.
- Does the outcome contain a number? If not, add one, even an estimate.
- Would your WHO immediately recognize themselves in the first clause?