Perfecting the Elevator Pitch Learn to rattle off a spiel quickly about your company, and soon you'll have more contacts than you'll know what to do with.

The more time you spend in business, the more you will hearpeople refer to "the elevator pitch." The goal of thiscolumn is to inform you of what the elevator pitch is, how todevelop one and how to use it effectively in the business world. Itis an essential part of any networking strategy.

What is an elevator pitch? As an entrepreneur, you may findyourself always pitching your product or service to a potentialcustomer, partner or investor. Sometimes these people only have the60 seconds it takes to ride an elevator, hence the term elevatorpitch. You should not have just one elevator pitch perfected, butrather a few different pitches that you can target depending onyour audience.