Kiren is currently based in EDB's New York Office. As the Regional Director of Eastern Americas, Kiren constantly travels around Eastern Americas to meet with C-suite Executives to encourage more investments in Singapore. In order to promote a country, a lot of strategic conceptualisation, business development and product development has to be done.

See below to read about Kiren's thoughts on how to deliver a great elevator pitch.

Learn from the best on how to execute an elevator pitch to C-suite Executives

I recently met with the CEO of a major IT company by chance at a business conference. We were seated at the same table over lunch. After 5 mins of ice-breaking, I decided to stress test EDB's newly developed Host to Home strategy with our clients. I asked myself, "Why don't I try our newly developed pitch on this chap?"

I created an opening in our conversation to naturally flow into our elevator pitch and I delivered it.
After I delivered the pitch and he started asking more questions around the 3 ways that Singapore creates value for multinational corporations. This gave me an opening to highlight how exactly we position and differentiate Singapore in Asia through the various initiatives around Home for Business / Innovation / Talent and the various horizontals that we have and will develop. Ending the pitch with a US MNC example helped to bring home the idea. I used P&G.

After that we exchanged cards to keep in touch and started speaking about where his past experience in Singapore.

I believe in the importance of preparing well for meetings. After all, putting some thought to prepare for a meeting is a key way of returning the respect that people give us by agreeing to meet with us. However, it is inevitable that one may be required to give a quick pitch in a chance encounter or summarise our key points due to unforeseen circumstances. People always ask me how I am able to put something across so succinctly and convincingly within a few minutes.

There are a few learning points for me personally which I would like to share:
a) You need to create a natural opening or a question that the other party asks to deliver the pitch.
b) You will need to nuance the pitch and customize it for the client. KYC (know your client).
c) You will need to internalise our strategies and intricately appreciate how our initiatives will
strengthen our strategy, positioning and value creation.

The 'Elevator Pitch' is NOT just a marketing message or tagline or talking points on a slide. It should be viewed as a means of communicating our strategies and positioning to external clients. If all of us intimately understand this, we will be a lot more convincing when we communicate the pitch :)