Today’s business students know the power of the so-called elevator pitch, a business concept delivered to prospective clients in the time it takes for a typical elevator ride.

“Every business person needs to have a 60-second elevator pitch to negotiate an appointment with a company, but elevator pitches are useful for anything,” said Steve Edison, a professor in the Department of Marketing and Advertising at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

But students often graduate having rarely had an opportunity to prepare and then deliver their short pitch in front of a live audience, Edison said.

He and other business faculty are addressing that challenge by holding UALR’s first-ever “elevator pitch competition” in the College of Business atrium on April 23.

The noon event will feature 10 finalists selected from an initial 70 entries submitted last fall during the pilot phase of the program.

Federated Insurance of Little Rock is supporting the competition by providing $2,500, with the top prize of $500 for the student with the best pitch, as judged by a panel of cross-disciplinary faculty, staff, and professionals.

Students will also be given an opportunity to vote.

And, since representatives from actual businesses will be observing the competition, competitors could be vying for more than money.

Although some of the students are business majors, many top contenders come from other disciplines, Edison said.

Edison and other faculty will determine which students most successfully perform some of these elevator pitch skills:

• Identifying key goals – the objective of the pitch
• Explaining what the student (or business) actually does – most memorable attribute or skill
• Communicating unique selling points
• Engaging the audience with a solid, open-ended question
• Communicating with body language

The campus community and public are invited to the free, hour-long event, which will include light refreshments.

For more information, go to Elevator Pitch Contest.

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