Missions And Elevators

There’s a wonderful conversation going on over at Paul Hassing’s blog, Small Business Owner. Paul’s a bit of an entrepreneur and writes about the challenges that face poor, overworked individuals trying to run their own companies.

So what the hell does that have to do with writing? Mission statements and elevator pitches, that’s what.

One of the more difficult aspects of writing to order – or for yourself – is coming up with two staples of the business-buzzword world: mission statements and elevator pitches.

The former are the short sentences or paragraphs that explain what your company (or your client’s company) do and how they do it. The latter are the one- or two-sentence summaries of the same thing, designed to tell a customer what you do in the time it takes an elevator to go up or down a couple of floors.

If you’re freelancing and being paid to produce these little gems of management expression, you’re going to need some vital information: a real understanding of what the business does, an insight into the owner’s dream and some catchy phrasing.

For the moment, though, head over to Paul’s blog and look at the comments on that particular post: there’s an incredibly useful discussion going on that everyone – owners, managers, employees and writers – can learn from.