I was taking questions from the audience following my presentation at a conference last spring when a young lady stood up and asked me if I could give my Elevator Pitch.
She must have noted the confused look on my face because she repeated herself this time adding further details.
“If you were riding an elevator with someone and you had a quick minute to sell your RCM services what would you say?”
Still a bit confused I repeated her question and said; “I’ve never considered myself a sales person, I got started in this business because I gave a presentation at a conference just like this on some of the successes I had experienced with an RCM methodology I had developed and my first two customers reached out to me directly to ask if I could help. So it’s quite likely if I happened to be on an elevator with someone who asked about RCM Blitz™ and seemed truly interested in what I do, I would hand them a business card and tell them to give a ring or send me an e-mail and we could talk.”
She smiled and said, “What if this was out of the blue, neither one of you had a business card, cell phone or anything to write with. I’m sure you must have something prepared that’s say 30 seconds to a minute long about what RCM Blitz ™ is and how it could help.”
“Well I have a book and a website and a blog, they are all quite popular. And the nice part about RCM Blitz ™ is it’s easy to remember. I’m sorry, I just have never considered myself to be a sales person. In fact, I really don’t care for sales people. I have my cell phone and home number on the do not call list and when a sales person does get through if I’m bored I let them carry on and then begin asking technical question about whatever it is they are selling and the first time I stump them I tell them they are not the person I am interested in talking to. I want someone who really knows how this product works not someone who is paid to sell it!”
The young lady is smiling so I decide to continue on.
“My customers sell my services, for every job that comes my way from someone making a sales call or responding to a RFQ (request for quote) there are 5 that come from a former customer who talked with someone at another company that is interested in RCM or were having reliability issues with a critical asset. I’m not sure if my former customers have this elevator pitch you referred to. I guess some of them might because I have several that have referred people to me on multiple occasions.”
I smiled and said, “I’m sorry, I really didn’t answer your question did I?”
She stood back up, took the microphone and said, “No, you didn’t. But you were honest, and that is kind of a rare quality these days. You see I was hired a few months back by a company to help sell their consulting services and I have really been struggling with how to sell RCM! I figured if anyone at this conference would know how to give an elevator pitch on RCM it would be you. And, while you convinced me that you aren’t a salesperson you did teach me that if I want to be able to sell it I had better take the time to really learn what it is and why it works.
I replied; “Well, please make sure to take one of my cards on the way out, when you get really good at selling RCM give me a call. I’m sure we could arrange a raise, a nice corner office and maybe even car.
The crowd of attendees gave us the best ovation of the day and in the box of questions and comments two people said; “The elevator pitch question and answer was great! Did you guys stage that?
Just like life, the best questions and things come when you least expect them!
All right, I think this is a good place to rehearse my very own Elevator Pitch. Eh? EH?
I am Carlos Viloria, and I help companies and consulting firms to get the most benefit from the maintenance and reliability programs for their process equipment.
I do that by helping them in succeeding with the single most significant challenge in an industrial plant to organize maintenance work and track plant performance: To have good data about the equipment in service, and the failure and maintenance events that occur.
Good data is key for tracking where maintenance money is going, compare assets performance from site to site, standardize maintenance practices. Every industry that operates a vast amount of equipment wants that.
I want to work with organizations that are currently using or plan to implement a computerized maintenance management system, or CMMS for short.
And I will work with them if they are totally committed with managing their maintenance and reliability programs through the CMMS and agree in paying attention to CMMS data more than any other part of their maintenance and reliability program through the program’s lifecycle.
Together we’ll identify concerns on data quality and consolidate such data and set procedures that will guarantee that plant personnel will make the best use of the CMMS to record failure notifications and work orders every time, accurately and with minimum delays.
If that makes sense to you, please feel free to drop me a line!
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VIRTUAL BUSINESS CARD
Carlos Viloria, Mechanical Engineer:
Facilitating maintenance management solutions to boost industrial reliability and safety
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-viloria-0132292b/?locale=en_US
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