Why Your 60-Second Networking Pitch Isn't Working (and How to Fix It)

If you've been to a local networking event, you know the 60-second intros. Everyone stands up, one at a time, and tells the room what they do.

Picture ten insurance agents in a row. Every one of them says some version of the same thing. "I help families protect what matters most." "I help people plan for the unexpected." "I make sure you're covered when life happens."

By the time the third one sits down, you couldn't tell them apart if your life depended on it.

Why everyone in the room sounds the same

It's not because they're bad at their jobs. Some of them are probably excellent.

It's because every one of them is describing the solution, and not one of them is describing the problem the person in that folding chair is actually losing sleep over.

Nobody in that room woke up thinking, "I need to protect what matters most." They woke up thinking, "If something happens to me, I have no idea how my wife would pay the mortgage." Or, "My premium went up again and nobody can tell me why."

That's the problem in their words. And whoever names it first wins the room.

Go in for better language, not a client

You can land clients at these events. But I tell people to go in without that intention.

Take it off the table, the expectation that you'll walk out with a client. Put a different expectation on the table instead: that you'll walk out with better language.

Your intention is feedback. A networking event gives you an instant audience with instant reactions, which is something you almost never get anywhere else. Test something you haven't tested yet. Have as many conversations as you want.

Then watch how many people approach you afterward, because that tells you how many actually connected with what you said.

When you go in that way, the pressure comes off. You stop performing and start listening, and the feedback gets louder.

The pitch gets sharper every time you use it

Whatever you wrote at your kitchen table is a branch off a tree. It's not a spear yet.

It becomes a spear by sharpening. Every room you say it in, every reaction you read and every word you cut because it didn't land makes it a little sharper, and the sharper it gets, the deeper it goes.

You don't sharpen it at home. You sharpen it by using it.

And if you get nervous, stumble or say the wrong thing, who cares. What you think is the wrong thing isn't always the wrong thing. Just be natural and talk about it the way you'd talk to a friend.

Are you hedging?

There's another reason networking stops working, and it has nothing to do with your pitch.

Say you walk into a networking meeting and see a room full of people you don't know and a couple you do. So you think, well, I'm here, I showed up, and you go talk to the people you already know.

That's hedging. You're not stepping into what's uncomfortable. You're finding the most comfortable thing in the room and running to it.

What happens next is predictable. You didn't get what you wanted out of the meeting, so you decide these events just don't work, or the people there aren't your people. Then comes the disappointment: why did I even go? So you stop going, and you chase something more comfortable instead.

That's not a networking problem. It's a loop, and the only way out is through the discomfort. Talk to the people you don't know, test the new version of your intro on them, and pay attention to what happens.

How to write a pitch people remember

Frequently asked questions