The importance of the right pitch. Less is more

I had a great day on Monday with a group of people who have come together to pool their expertise to inspire teams to ever greater performance.
http://www.winningteams.co.uk/index.html

I am a great reflector, and what struck me was that we all had so much to say about what we do that we lost the message in the words!

We are overloaded with information, blogs, newletters, twitter, social networking sites, email et-al.
Whether you are selling yourself at a job interview, a product or your own company you have such a small window of opportunity before your audience switches off.
How many are still with me? Not as many as started because I have not promised anything so have broken the rules already!
If you do need to grab attention read on because I am going to show you in less than a minute how to make your point within a minute.

It only takes 6 elements, so if you keep each to less than 10 seconds you've said everything you have to in less than a minute.

1. Who your are.
2. Who your message is for. (target audience)
3. What they /want/need/fear.(statement of compelling reason to buy)
4. What you are talking about. (product name category or label)
5. How it helps.(statement of key benefits)
6. Your differentiator. (primary competitive alternative)

There is obviouly far more to conveying a compelling message than words alone, some would say that words account for only 7% of the message that you convey. That being the case then you should choose your words carefully and adapt them to suit the listener!