Marketing for Engineers: How to Develop Your Elevator Pitch (and Why You Need One)

by Aubrey Bach

Last week, a small group of Seattle Girl Geek Dinner members met at PayScale’s office for the first-ever Seattle Girl Geek Lean-In Circle. Since Liz Morgan and I both spend a lot of time talking about career strategy and looking at how people describe themselves and their jobs, we decided to kick off the group by talking about something that everybody should have in their professional toolbelt: the elevator pitch.

Why Elevator Pitches?

Elevator pitches are hard. But when it comes to interviewing, networking, presenting, or just getting other people excited about an idea you’re working on, elevator pitches are vital. But they can be especially challenging for women. Women aren’t just socialized to be less inclined towards self-promotion; we actually face negative consequences for that kind of behavior. (Check out LeanIn’s Ban Bossy campaign for more information.) As a result, we self-promote less, negotiate less, ask for fewer promotions, and are less likely to apply for jobs than our male peers. That’s why it’s so important that women working in the male-dominated tech field who want to be successful put in the time and effort to really nail down their elevator pitch. And since we want the Girl Geek LeanIn circle to be a place where women in the Seattle tech scene can learn applicable skills that help them achieve their career goals, it seemed like a natural fit for the subject of our first event.

Why You Should Think Like a Comedian

Even though Liz and I both work for tech companies centered around the “career” space, we knew we needed some help when it came to preaching the gospel of preaching your gospel. So I reached out to a good friend and former coworker, the fantabulous Bridget Quigg, who is not only an 11-year vet of the Seattle tech scene, but also an accomplished comedienne and improv actor.

Bridget, who has worked at PayScale, Socrata, and SimplyMeasured, and now consults companies on content strategy in addition to hosting a one-woman comedy show about the Seattle Tech Scene, explained how the improv principal of “Yes and…” should be the cornerstone of our personal elevator pitches via a series of seriously ice-breaking partner exercises. Once Bridget got us in the mind frame of “Yes and…” we were ready to break into the dos and don’ts of elevator pitches.

The Dos and Don’ts

Then Liz, who has probably seen more LinkedIn profiles than the rest of us combined, shared some basic tips and tricks for our elevator pitches.

• Do keep it short (30 seconds or less)
• Do be clear, compelling, and goal-oriented
• Do have a hook
• Do use power words like “increased,” “influenced,” “implemented,” “negotiated,” and “created”
• Don’t use meaningless jargon

Then we actually sat down to write our personal elevator pitches. We started by writing down all the things we do, and do well, and started turning those lists into our pitches. This was followed by sharing and clapping — it was a real girl-power moment.

What We Learned

After this surprisingly cathartic, empowering exercise, I learned that elevator pitches are hard, and that mine definitely needs some work. I also learned that everybody struggles, no matter how smart and accomplished they are, but that working on my pitch while surrounded by some incredibly smart ladies makes it a lot easier.

I also learned that getting your elevator pitch right means striking a balance between action and reaction. With an elevator pitch, you have 30 seconds to show somebody who you are and what you do, and make sure they remember it. That means you have to be clear about your accomplishments with action statements (rattle off what you do with those power words) and elicit a reaction from your audience by striking an emotional cord with whomever you are speaking to. As somebody with a background in marketing, my instinct is to focus too much on the reaction part — I’ve definitely skimped on the action section. But for engineers, remembering to follow up those numbers with a tug on the heartstring can make you stand out from the crowd.

My Pitch

So, after a few revisions, here is the elevator pitch I developed after the first Seattle Girl Geek LeanIn Circle:

I’m Aubrey Bach. I have a unique background in both editorial and tech that I’ve used to create and strategize digital content for the past 10 years. I’m really good at making complicated information easy for everybody to understand and act on. Now I’m using that skillset to manage the creation of a new product line at PayScale that’s expanding our market reach into the higher ed space and helping students, their families, and college administrators make smarter, data-driven decisions about education.

What do you think? The best thing about elevator pitches is that they are always evolving, because each of us is always changing and growing. I’d welcome your feedback, and I’d love to hear YOUR elevator pitch in the comments!

P.S.: Want to see Bridget in action skewering the Seattle tech scene? Get tickets to her one-woman show, Techlandia, showing in Seattle this February and March.