(flickr photo:  Elevate by Frozenquack)

Every lawyer, business person and neutral interested in controlling his/her future should read this month's article by Catherine Alman MacDonagh and Beth Marie Cuzzone, Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch in the ABA's current Law Practice Magazine.

When I was a young associate, a senior partner in my firm bragged that he could pick up a girl during the time it took the elevator to get from our floor, the 25th, to the ground.  

"That's what you have to be able to do to develop a practice," he said gruffly, as I recalled his earlier advice that all a woman has to do to pick up a guy is to "show up."  I was certain that "showing up" wasn't a sufficient skill to develop my own Fortune 500 clients but I puzzled over the elevator rule for many years as if it were a zen koan.  

Today I learn that "elevator pitch" is an actual term of art -- an "introduction and description of who you are and what you do . . . ; [an] opportunity to define (or redefine) your personal brand or your reputation." 

"Communicating your elevator pitch," say MacDonagh and Cuzzone, "allows [others] to remember how you help people" and gives them the ability to "be your commercial."   

To be effective, say the authors, your pitch should be ten to twenty seconds in duration, succinct and memorable, spotlight your uniqueness, focus on benefits and be effortless to deliver.  

Earlier today I read some great "elevator pitches" in a Los Angeles Times article about Stanford Business School's "Entrepreneur Idol" Competition.  The competition required the students to "pitch their best business ideas" in one minute to a panel of four venture capitalists and one technology blogger.   The prize was "$2,000 in seed money and connections to a top-level venture firm." 

Contest winner Linus Liang held up a diapered baby doll and asked, "What if I could tell you how you can save 4 million babies a year?"   His idea?  Create a low-cost incubator that could help infants in developing countries. 

I have a lot to say about "elevator pitches," but suggest you take a look at MacDonagh and Cuzzone's article first.  I'll get back to this topic soon.