Which tool to choose
The tool is the conversation assistant, used by subtraction: your work together is to remove, not to add. You give it the long version and ask it to tighten it to the bone. Keep several versions of different durations — one for thirty seconds, one for a minute, one for two — because depending on whom you meet and how much time you have, you'll need the right one. No special tool is needed: you need the discipline to cut, and the AI helps you do it without growing attached to every word the way you do when you're the one writing about yourself.
How to do it
- Tell the AI at length what you do or propose, whom it's for, and why it's different.
- Ask it to compress it into a thirty-second pitch: problem, solution, why you.
- Have it also give you a one-minute version and a single sentence of summary, to use as an opener.
- Try it out loud, time it, and cut some more of what isn't essential until it flows and fits the time.
A concrete example
Sara, who was opening a consulting practice, stumbled every time someone asked her "what do you do?": she'd launch into a story and lose herself. She explained everything to the AI and asked for a thirty-second elevator speech. The assistant gave her three sentences: her clients' problem, how she solves it, what sets her apart. Sara tried it out loud, trimmed a word, and learned it as an idea, not by heart. At the next trade fair, to the usual question, she answered in thirty clear seconds and the person wanted to know more. The difference wasn't saying more, it was stopping saying too much.
When it DOESN'T work (and how to fix it)
If the pitch stays too long or generic
It means you haven't cut enough yet. Ask the AI to halve it and to focus on a single thing that sets you apart, not three. A pitch that tries to say everything says nothing: better one thing that sticks than five that are forgotten.
If it's not clear what you do
Sometimes, in the effort to tighten, the substance disappears. Bring back to the center the concrete problem you solve, in words anyone would understand, without jargon. If whoever listens can't say, afterward, what you do, the pitch has failed even if it sounded good.
If it sounds impersonal
A pitch that's too polished sounds like a slogan. Give the AI your way of speaking and one genuine conviction of yours about why you do it, and tell it to keep them. A pinch of you makes it credible: people buy the person too, not just the sentence.
A tip from someone who really uses it
Work to remove, not to say everything: the value of a pitch lies in what you leave out. The instinct, when you talk about yourself or your project, is to slip in every detail because it all seems important to you — and it's exactly what makes an elevator speech confused and forgettable. Use the AI like a blade: give it the complete version and have it cut until only the essential remains, the sentence you'd want the other person to repeat to someone else. Then learn it as an idea to say in your own words, not as a text to recite. A good pitch isn't the one that contains the most things, it's the one that, once the elevator ride is over, the other person remembers.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an elevator speech be?
Truly a few seconds in the basic version — the time of a brief exchange. It's worth having several versions of different lengths and using the one suited to the moment: thirty seconds for a quick encounter, a couple of minutes if there's more room.
How do I make sure I don't forget anything important?
By getting the goal wrong: a pitch shouldn't say everything, it should say the essential. Focus on the problem you solve and on what sets you apart; the rest you tell afterward, if the other person wants to know more.
Better to learn it by heart?
Better to learn it as an idea: the key points to say naturally. By heart you risk sounding mechanical and freezing up if you skip a word. Practice it until it comes out spontaneously.
If the AI writes it perfectly for me, do I have the ideal pitch?
No, and it's the illusion that produces polished but cold pitches. An elevator speech doesn't live on paper, it lives in the moment you say it to a real person: what counts is how it sounds in your voice, whether it's clear, whether it sticks. A perfect text that you recite awkwardly, or that doesn't taste of you, works less than a less polished one that's yours and tested. The AI gives you an excellent starting compression; turning it into something you say naturally and that the other person remembers is your work, done out loud. Stopping at the well-written text is the most common way to have a pitch that seems right and hooks no one.