It can be anyone and no one!!!

But one thing is to do some check up on the business or association so that you can get an idea before jumping right into their business.

You did great actually!

The idea of the “elevator pitch” is that you boil your proposition down to something that can be delivered in two minutes, but it’s not so that you *can* do it in two minutes. No one has *only* two minutes. The idea is that when you’ve simplified what you want to say, it’s much easier to deliver it when you’ve got, say, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. You’ll know whether you’ve covered the points you need to cover.

There’s a really great show called Dragon’s Den, where inventors and entrepreneurs pitch their products to venture capitalists (angel investors, really). The show has been airing in major markets all over the world, except the US for whatever reason. Until this year, that is. They’re making a version for the US market called The Shark Tank, which amusingly enough borrows two of the investors from Canada’s show. In a down economy, I predict that the show will do well. It’s very possibly the only *true* reality show.

I bring up this show because it’s a fantastic showcase of sales pitches. You see everything from the tight-as-a-drum sales gods, right down to the people who don’t understand the difference between revenue and profit.

If you have a business that you want people to buy into, this is a very valuable series of lessons. I highly recommend watching an episode or two just to see what I mean.

http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/video.html

Sean Wise, the show’s producer (and a shameless self-promoter), explains an elevator pitch in this YouTube video that’s very popular with marketing instructors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq0tan49rmc

The point is really just to be prepared to deliver your message in a way that’s going to be welcomed, in whatever space of time you have. And if by some strange set of circumstances that’s only two minutes, well, you’re prepared.