Success Circle Call #1: What Do You Do?
How do you answer the question, “What do you do?” Your response should be concise, powerful and memorable. It is your Value Proposition Statement; also called an elevator speech or positioning statement.
A Value Proposition Statement should set you apart from your competition by stating what you do in a memorable way. The first step to a killer value proposition statement is to examine your strengths and weaknesses relative to your competition. What is your true competitive advantage?
Once you identify what makes you better, you need to convert your strength to a benefit. In other words, why would a prospect be interested in what you do? What's in it for them? For example, suppose you are a window cleaning company and your firm's biggest strength is cleaning high rise buildings over 10 stories' high. In other words, you have a select pool of talent in a very specific industry. The benefit to your clients is that you can quickly send a team over to wash their windows. That means that the upper floors are cleaned promptly and tenants can clearly see the breath taking views from their space.
Besides translating your strength to a benefit statement, you need to narrow your focus to who you serve best. Two great ways to identify your best prospects are by industry or job title, since those are the most common ways that people categorize what they do. By narrowing your focus and identifying specifically one group you work with, you help the people you meet associate you with the people you want to meet. This, in turn, will make you more memorable and will lead to more referral opportunities.
To put it all together you can use the following format when someone asks, “What do you do?” You simply say, “I work with blank (fill in with job title or industry) to blank (fill in with benefit statement).”
Feel free to be creative and state what you do in an original and interesting way. While you want to avoid sounding like a commercial, you do want to create interest and encourage the logical next response which is, “How do you do that?” In the case of the example of the window washing company, a good value proposition statement could be something like “I work with building managers to provide a clear view for their tenants.”
“So, how do you do that?” becomes the logical response. To which the window washing salesperson can say, “Our highly trained staff use a bosun chair to access the outside of the building. The chair is attached to rope, which is fastened to equipment on the building's roof. For buildings higher than 300 feet, workers use a swing stage attached to a steel cable this allows them to wash windows as they repel down the building to the ground.”
While the person asking “What do you do?” may not be a building owner or manager or even work in a high rise building, you can be sure that they will now associate you with high rise window washing. With that association firmly planted, the chance for positive word of mouth and referrals increase dramatically in the future. People will remember you and what you do if you properly “position” yourself and make it easy to be remembered.
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