Harvard business School communication skills

Try Out the Harvard Elevator Pitch Builder July 9, 2015

The other day, I wrote about how to brainstorm and build the perfect elevator speech in five steps. Another tool you should try when creating the perfect pitch is using the Harvard Business School’s .

The online tool will help you select effective words to describe yourself, walk you through creating your who, what, why, and a goal. And then it gets better: It’ll analyze your pitch for you with stats like how many seconds it will take you to present the speech.

This is what my elevator speech looks like after running it through the Pitch Builder:

I’m an Internal Communications Specialist with 12 years of experience in the field of communication. I write the blog Communicate (Your) Skills which cover how to improve your communication skills in all areas related to yourself, your community and your professional life. I’m determined to uncover the secrets of how successful people and companies communicate. The blog serves as a knowledge bank on how to communicate your way to success. I’m sure this is a topic of great interest to professional people who are trying to succeed both in work and personal life. I’m currently preparing for a special series featuring interviews and guest posts by successful people telling others how they communicate their particular skills. I would be very pleased if you would like to contribute on the blog with a post telling how you communicate your skills.

My pitch is 138 words long and will take 35 seconds to deliver. I also got an auto-generated tip that says I should be careful not to turn it into a memorized monologue. After all, the pitch is designed to start a conversation, not delivering a sermon.

Create your elevator speech today

You’ll never know when you’ll need an elevator pitch. Perhaps you meet someone important already tomorrow. And you don’t want to stand speechless, do you?

I’d really like to read your elevator pitch after you’ve created it in the Pitch Builder. Please share your new pitch in the comment box below!