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Today’s show featured an interview with Chris Westfall, author of “The New Elevator Pitch.”
Find Chris on LinkedIn.
CHRIS’ TIP: “Preparation is important, but presence is priceless. You can rehearse your message, polish your pitch, and script every word—but if you’re not fully present in the moment, truly listening, and tuned in to the needs and emotions of your audience, you’ll miss the connection that really drives trust and action. Presence is what transforms information into influence.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: I’m very excited. Chris Westfall, we got you on the show today. You’re going to tell us a great sales story. Give us a little bit of an introduction. What do we need to know about you?
Chris Westfall: Well, you know how when people say, “Tell me a little bit about yourself?” The way that you answer that is called an elevator pitch. A few years back, Fred, I was recognized as the US National Elevator Pitch Champion. I’ve been answering this question a lot in a professional capacity. Since that recognition as the National Elevator Pitch Champion, I’ve helped thousands of entrepreneurs and organizations to tell their stories more effectively. I’ve coached my clients onto television shows like Shark Tank here in the US, Dragons’ Den in Canada, even Shark Tank Australia. I’m also a storyteller for my clients as a ghost writer. Since the pandemic, I’ve written eight books as a ghost writer. One of them was a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and that’s in addition to four books that I’ve written under my own name.
What people probably need to know about me is that I am a storyteller. That is my job. That is the service that I have to offer. Today, in the spirit of service, I would love to tell you a story about a very interesting sales conversation that literally transformed my career.
Fred Diamond: First off, how did you win the National Elevator Pitch Championship? Was that at a conference or was that an organization? Just give us some insight into that.
Chris Westfall: It all started on X, if you can believe it. I saw a tweet, I saw a message that there was a national contest to find out who had the best elevator pitch in the United States. I thought to myself, “Well, I’ll try. What’s the harm?” I entered into this contest, which meant that I had to record an elevator pitch. For the purposes of the contest, the speech had to be 118 seconds long, so just under two minutes. I recorded my elevator pitch, which was 118 seconds, I uploaded it, and I had to get votes on social media. Fred, in the voting, I actually came in second place. I thought, “Well, this was a great experience. I’m glad I did it.”
An entrepreneur from Atlanta actually came in first in terms of the voting, but I received a phone call the next day from the folks who had put together the contest. It was like an American Idol think, they were like, “Chris, we’ve watched all the videos, even though you’re second place in the voting, you are first place with us. You are the National Elevator Pitch Champion.” I thought, “Wow.” I was thrilled. I was excited. Maybe some of the people watching today, they’re wondering, “What exactly is that?”
With the recognition came a realization for me, and that is that whatever it is that I’ve been able to do, to figure out for myself how to create compelling stories, this recognition is really a call to service, which is quite candidly the way that I view sales, that sales is service. It’s not about being pushy or forcing people into something that they don’t want. In my experience, the person who offers the greatest service and delivers that service, creating an experience for the customer, is the one who wins. That’s true, but only 100% of the time, at least that’s what it’s looked like to me.
In the spirit of service, I began to look at what I had done, what I had realized, what I had gathered in my career, and in my experience, that it allowed me to receive this recognition. In order to make sense of the experience, offering a service to others to help them to tell their stories in a more compelling way. I had done that before in my career in sales, also as a sales manager and a vice president of sales and directing marketing and all those kinds of things that you do when you’re working in corporations. But for me personally, after this recognition, I look very deeply at what is the service that I can create. That’s what led me to write my first book, which is called The New Elevator Pitch. The rest, as they say, is history. The recognition put me on the radar screen for a number of corporations and organizations, and led me to keynote speeches all over the world. As well as a thriving coaching practice, working with executive leaders as well as entrepreneurs and basically anyone who has a story to tell.
Fred Diamond: We talk a lot on the Sales Game Changes Podcast about the concept of servant leadership and about the concept that sales is all about service. The great sales professionals that we work with at the Institute for Excellence in Sales, they know that, and the great sales leaders who’ve been on the show. You did a great job explaining that. I’m actually getting more excited to hear your story. Chris Westfall, tell us a great sales story.
Chris Westfall: I was invited to go to an event at a university where I’ve worked for the last 10 years. It’s actually the largest university in the United States, Texas A&M University, largest in terms of student population as well as land mass, because they have a big agricultural school there. But that’s a whole nother story. But I went to Texas A&M University, which is about 85 miles from where I live here on the west side of Houston. I had been invited to hear an executive leader speak, who was the CEO at a company that’s on the FTSE, which is the British equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange. It’s a FTSE 100 company.
I went to hear this individual speak, and he was being interviewed by my friend who had invited me. Unbeknownst to me, she started talking about the way that we had worked together and some of the results that I’ve been able to create in working with students, particularly student entrepreneurs at Texas A&M University. As I was sitting there in the third row, just blushing a little bit and being very flattered, she was saying some very, very nice things. We’d worked together for a few years and she really knew my history and I knew hers. She said, unprompted, “Chris, what I’d really like you to do is if you’d be willing to stand up, come down here on stage and share a little bit about what you did for us on stage,” and she named this event. She said she wanted me to basically recreate it. Well, Fred, the event took place in 2013, and I’m like, “Well, that’s going back a ways.”
Reluctantly, I got up out of my seat, and of course, I wanted to come up there and I wanted to share, and I wanted to share what had occurred with me, but I knew that I couldn’t recreate the past. I knew that the only way I could approach this story was to look at where I was, what I was seeing, what I was doing right now. I really stepped into the idea that I know to be true, and that is that the past reminds us, but it does not define us.
Instead of leaning on past accomplishments or trying to recreate 2013, it’s a fool’s errand, I spoke from the heart of what I had seen and the way that my work with the university and with these entrepreneurs had inspired me, and how that inspiration had led me to create some results for some very, very talented people. It was a story about connection, because at the end of the day, I think that the greatest skill that any sales leader can possess is that ability to connect. Seeing that connection and sharing it was what I did. If you say to me, “Chris, so what exactly did you say?” Fred, I don’t know. But I just looked in that direction and I impromptu stood up and spoke, and there was about a hundred people in the room.
When I finished, the CEO looked at me and he said, “That is exactly what we need.” It was one of these events that has happened to me on more than one occasion, where the key to my success, showing up, speaking up, looking in the direction of service, looking in the direction of connection. The CEO said to me, “Please, come talk to me after this is all over.” The event was over and the interviews were concluded, and it was just a fantastic event. I came up to him and he said to me, “What are you doing in April of next year?” I said, “What do you mean what am I doing in April?” He says, “Well, we’re having a sales event, and it’s our international conference, and we’d love it if you would come and speak and share with us what you spoke of, connection, impact, persuasion.”
Fred, this is the story of how Chris Westfall ended up in Malta, of all places. In the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, where this event was taking place, because the company, being based in London and having an international clientele, not only allowed me to go to Malta and speak at this event and conduct training so that it wasn’t just about sharing new ideas and getting people to, “I’m thinking about sales differently.” No, sales is an experience. It’s an experience. The experience that you create for the client or the customer is what the company wanted to explore further. That was what we created. It wasn’t just a keynote, it was a keynote plus a training and an opportunity for people to put ideas on their feet.
It would be naive of me to think that I could say something or share something that a sales leader in Malaysia or Germany hasn’t thought of or experienced in a way that I might not even understand. I recognize the importance of peer-to-peer learning, of giving people an opportunity to share within a cultural context, these universal principles. It was an unbelievable experience for me. Not only because I got to go to Malta, I’m from the Midwest, so I didn’t grow up going to Malta, not only that, but I also had the opportunity to, prior to that, go to London and help the company with coaching all of their executives, because they had a team. They wanted 16 executives to speak to investors, which in London, when you’re speaking to investors, you’re speaking to The City. In the United States we say Wall Street, but in London it’s called The City.
The executive team didn’t want to just showcase their communication skills. They wanted people throughout the organization to speak. I was a communications coach for a team of 16 people, and I had the opportunity to back clean up, although they don’t say back clean up in the UK. But I had the opportunity to speak to The City as well, and to stand up in front of hundreds of investors and share what the experience of working with the company meant for me. Was I selling something directly? No. But it was all about service and helping people to communicate and connect so that the investment community as well as the entire company in Malta had an experience that created change. That was a story that I wanted to share with you.
Fred Diamond: Actually, connections are so critical. We talk a lot about, at the Institute for Excellence in Sales and the Sales Game Changers Podcast, about how you as a sales professional, you need to show up with that ability. A lot of it comes with preparation, understanding who you’re talking to, and doing the research. But also, the thing too that I liked about what you said in the very beginning is, the person asked you to come up and talk about an event that you had done years before. You could have done that probably for 15, 20 minutes, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact, but you were able to have something prepared.
I tell people all the time when they come on my podcast and they just start talking about features and benefits and all those things, and they ask me for advice. I always say, “Have a pocket full of stories ready to go.” Something that your company did to help one of your customers solve a big problem. Or something that you did, even if it was 10, 15 years ago, that solved a big problem so that the customer that you’re talking to now can relate to that. I’m glad that the CEO saw that and it led to all these great things for you.
Give us a tip for the audience here about what they can take away from this great story to help them become better sales professionals.
Chris Westfall: Preparation is important, but presence is priceless. The way that you show up is what creates the world around you and creates an experience for the customer, for the client. You hit on something, Fred, that I find really inspiring, being relatable. In the midst of whatever challenges the customer’s going through, it’s impossible to prepare for exactly what they’re going to say. You and I, we’ve connected, but I don’t know that I’ve prepared for this interview yet. I have a lifetime of preparation if I choose to be present, to listen, to take in the questions and see what shows up. Preparation is important, but presence is what creates that experience. That experience has to be, as you mentioned, relatable.
Fred Diamond: I love the word presence there. You’re being there for them. I learned a long time ago too, I have customers that are interested in me and my life and they want to get to know me and build a relationship, but almost a hundred percent of the time, they’re looking at me as the expert to help solve their problems. Especially now, it’s even more imperative that sales professionals show up and have that presence because customers don’t need you as much as they used to. They can get information on the internet, they need you more, but they don’t need you for the little things. They don’t need you for the features and for the benefits of your product or your service. They can get that on ChatGPT or Google anytime of the day or night. What they need you for is your expertise, you bringing them value to help them solve the bigger problems that they’re trying to solve. That only comes with you being present and being of service to what they’re trying to achieve.
You covered a lot of great things here, Chris, that brings a lot of things together that we talk about frequently on the Sales Game Changers Podcast and in a way that is very relatable as well.
Chris Westfall: Thank you my friend. I appreciate the opportunity to be part of the conversation. Anything that I can do to help sales leaders to create that connection and being relatable so that you are seen. It might be a cliche to say trusted advisor, but I think that expertise, it begins with relatability. Do you really see and understand where your customer is coming from? Can you shift to the other side of the table? Not where you forget who you work for, but understanding the value of relatability, the value of having an advocate and an ally who is as committed to the right solution as you are. That is a powerful and a persuasive place to start the conversation.
Fred Diamond: Thanks to Chris Westfall for being on today’s Sales Story and a Tip Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo