You have a great service or product to market. How do you create your brand, effectively pitch it to clients, and put a price tag on your time? Some expert advice to help your business take off

Malkie is a diligent secretary, working at her desk for the past ten years. Her boss values her reliability and efficiency, but office work isn’t Malkie’s idea of bliss. Within her circle of family and friends, everyone knows Malkie as the gourmet baker who creates the most eye-popping, artistic — and delicious — cakes. “You should sell these!” people gush when they taste her cakes at simchahs.

Malkie would love to make the jump from pushing papers to full-time baking. But is this realistic? How will she get the word out to ensure a burgeoning clientele? How much should she charge? She’s flummoxed.

Elevator Opportunity

All successes begin as dreams, but before you quit your day job, you’d better make sure that dream is coming through in full-color, high-resolution form. “You have to define your mission,” advises Julie Levi, the successful founder of a promotional marketing company, who spoke at the 2015 Jewish Women Entrepreneurs conference in Stamford, Connecticut. “You need to first conceptualize what you want your business to look and feel like.”

One of the most effective ways to focus your vision is to craft what’s known as an “elevator pitch.” The term originally comes from film, conjuring the image of a wannabe script writer who finds himself in an elevator with a producer and has only a few seconds to condense his idea into a convincing sales pitch. But the concept has evolved since the early days of screenwriting.

Jeffrey Hayzlett, in the introduction to The New Elevator Pitch, advocates the 118-second elevator pitch: eight seconds to hook your listener, and 110 to drive it home. “Simply put,” he writes, “your 118-second pitch must do the following: 1) grab the attention of your prospect, 2) convey who you are, 3) describe what your business offers, and 4) explain the promises you will deliver on.”

Seems simple, right? But condensing your entire mission into less than two minutes isn’t easy. In fact, the attempt to do so is an excellent exercise that forces you to define the core of your business. “An elevator pitch should be about three or four sentences at most,” explains Talia Mashiach, CEO of Eved, a company that provides services for corporate events. “Don’t use jargon, and don’t say what you do; say what you do for people.”

During her workshop at the JWE conference, Talia helped participants hone their pitches. A physical therapist, for example, was told she shouldn’t simply state, “I’m Sara, and I’m a physical therapist.” Instead, she should specifically state what she’ll accomplish for the client: “I’m Sara, and I improve people’s quality of life by increasing their strength, muscle tone, and flexibility.”

To make your pitch more exciting, Talia adds, describe where your market is heading. Sara, for example, might add, “People need these services more and more as they age or become injured.”

You could also grab your listener’s attention with a provocative question. For example, a life insurance agent could ask a man, “Do you love your wife?” Assuming the answer is yes, he can follow with, “In that case, you’ll surely want to protect her with life insurance…” Say you work in search engine optimization; you can start your pitch by asking, “Do you use Google?” Since most people do, follow up with, “I help business owners get their websites ranked high in Google searches, and this increases their bottom line by bringing them more leads.” The listener leaves with a clear idea of what you do for clients and how it helps them.

“The goal,” Talia sums up, “is for your listener to ask for a business card!”