When you are at a very large meeting, there is a strong likelihood that you will meet many individuals who have only a passing familiarity with you and your work. It happened to me this morning at breakfast. I was sitting at a table with three people who I had just met. We exchanged very brief backgrounds.
Prior to coming to the meeting, we had one main objective. We are trying to introduce new technology to the sales team. In order to maximize our effectiveness, we worked as a team to come up with an "elevator speech". The basic idea is that if you are riding an elevator with someone, you are supposed to convey your main point before the other person steps out.
It's actually much more challenging than it appears at first glance. We often have a tendency to take one of two extremes. At one end, we overestimate just how much the other person understands about our issues and give a story that is too vague to understand. At the other end, we may try to stuff ten pounds of details into a five pound speech and end up confusing or losing our audience entirely.
For our speech, we really came up with three key points to share with our target audience. For each point, we used an example that our pilot group had given us in their experience to underscore the point. Finally, we would point out all of the ways to get additional assistance if required.
So far, I think it's working. I suppose the best way to tell would be to check in with a few of the people we talked to later in the meeting.
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