Forget the tagline. Forget the elevator pitch.  Forget mission statement, long winded (worded) explanations. You have 5 seconds to get my attention before I go elsewhere. Tell you story in 5 seconds or less – or else.  Yes – that’s brutal. But it’s true. And it will force you to be concise, exact and smart in how you communicate.

Here’s a true story.  When I started my first entrepreneurial venture, Colorations Inc., one of my mentors exhorted me to distill the essence of my business, my value proposition and or what I was looking for when meeting a business colleague into three different ‘elevator’ pitches. One was the short one – the length of time for people to wait for and enter into an elevator before the doors closed.  A longer one – the length of time to go from the first floor to the third Floor. And the longest one – when you know you’ll be riding in the elevator for a good length of time and have a captive audience.

In short – a 10 second, a 20 second and a 30 second version.

Sound familiar? The cliché’ of the elevator pitch is ingrained in our  business vernacular.

Well – I’m here to tell you that it’s old news. On the internet You don’t have 10 seconds anymore. No one has time to read your short synopsis.  They want to see it, hear it and get hooked in 5 seconds of less.  (about the time it would take to read a 140 character tweet).

But it’s not Twitter that has done this to us. It’s Youtube .  Thank you very much Google. My ADD has just gotten reinforced.

You see – 5 seconds is the length of time that YouTube video ads play before you can skip them altogether.

Just think how often you have actually clicked on that “Skip Ad” button to switch off the promotional video ad. It’s an annoyance isn’t it?

Try out your pitch in a mirror Go on – give it a try – talk to yourself in the mirror. See if you can ‘hook’ yourself in less than 5 seconds on whether someone should bother listening to you anymore.

This really forces you to distill your business message down to it’s bare naked essentials.

Now don’t give me the excuse that you have a ‘simple business’ with a ‘complicated message’. If that’s the case – then you don’t really know what your business looks like to your client or customer. They are not interested in your complicated message. They want it real and digestible. If you can’t give something in 5 seconds to grab their interest then you have homework to do.

And make it visual. If you use any graphics or even a video then make sure it tells your story quickly. People grasp 100X more with graphics. Not Words! So show me your story – or give it to me in audio. Just don’t make me read too much.

Add some intrigue. Add some gamification. Get me hooked. Lead me to the watering hole where I can drink up more of what you have to offer.

TAKEAWAYS

Here’s a short list of what to include in your 5 second video pitch

1.         Paint a verbal picture (or if this is a video – show a pictures) or why you business is of interest to anyone (or the target audience)

2.         Include ‘hook’ language – Follow along, I’ll reveal soon, Let me show you, Peel away the onion,

3.         Why How What

• Get to the Why quickly and lead them to find out What it is that you offer

• Get them to stick around for How you do it.  (this is a change of sequence from the classic Start with Why