One of the obligatory steps in preparing for a trade show is to make sure everyone has the company’s elevator speech nailed. An elevator speech is a concise message about you or your company. The term implies that you should be able to deliver this speech on an elevator before the doors open. Essentially, it answers the question: “what does your company do?”
The elevator speech is very handy in the general public – at a wedding, football game, or happy hour where you’re meeting people from many different sectors of the workforce. However, at a trade show most people know what you do. They’re either familiar with your company or they’ll get it with a quick answer like “access control”. While at a trade show, you should throw away your elevator speech and replace it with a lobby speech.
Your lobby speech answers the question: “what makes you different than your competition?” The name “lobby speech” comes from the concept that you walk out of the elevator into the lobby and they’re actually interested in your company. What do you do now? That’s the lobby speech.
At a trade show, where everyone generally knows your business, you need to deliver you lobby speech dozens of times per day. Not “what do you do”, but “what makes you different?”. Make sure you can do so with two to three crisp bullet points that are relevant and real. Don’t feed them a bunch of grandiose language that means nothing to them.
