“So, what do you do?”
I’m willing to bet you’ve used that line once or twice in your life. And while I have no research to back it up, I gotta believe it must be one of the most common conversation icebreakers, if not the most common.
And one of the deadliest. Nothing kills an interesting conversation faster than talking shop to people who know next to nothing about your line of work.
Here’s how it goes. You’ve just been introduced to someone at a party. You have no idea what to say. It’s a safe bet this person has a job, so you break out the old warhorse: “So, what do you do…?” They start talking – and you go right into autopilot: “Oh yeah? Uh huh? Really? You don’t say.”
Snooze.
The sad reality is, most people have a very difficult time saying what they do in a way that other people would find interesting, even exciting – in a way that would lead someone else to ask truly insightful follow-up questions. Why? Is it because most jobs or most companies are really that boring? I don’t buy it.
After all, we spend one-third of our lives at the job, fully half of our waking time working. Some of us are probably sleep walking on the job, it’s true, but I believe most of us do work that we enjoy and are proud of. Maybe even passionate about. Why is it so difficult to convey that excitement to other people?
Consider the following example. [Full disclosure: I know virtually nothing about how drug companies work, so this example may not make much sense in the real world. Just trying to illustrate my point.]
Q: “So, what do you do?”
A1: “I work in the R&D department of a biotech company. I’m a project manager in an area that focuses on analyzing lab results to determine the efficacy of various drugs as part of the FDA approval process.”
Still awake?
Let’s try it again.
Q: “So, what do you do?”
A2: “I work for a company that will cure cancer in our lifetime. I’m absolutely sure of it. My job is to make sure that new drugs we develop will actually help people, and not kill them.”
Now, if that doesn’t peak your interest, check to see if you still have a pulse.
There’s no big mystery about what’s going on here. The first answer focuses on what we do. The second answer says, here’s why it matters. Why always trumps what. The real mystery is that people continue to focus on the what, not the why, when the why is so much more interesting.
In his recently published book, Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, Nick Morgan elaborates on this idea:
The first questions on everyone’s mind when people communicate are about the whys of the meeting or event or conversation: Why are we here? Why is this important? Why is this relevant to me? … Our first need is to be oriented, and we can’t begin to pay attention to anything else until that’s taken care of. (p. 37)
And that brings me to where I eventually wanted to get with this blog: the elevator pitch.
The elevator pitch is a pithy statement companies create to explain who they are. In a way, it helps orient people, as Morgan suggests. The idea is that you should be able to recite this pitch to someone you’ve just met in the elevator, so that before either of you gets off the elevator your new friend will have a pretty good idea of what your company does and why that’s important.
Piece of cake, right?
Uh, no. If you’ve never worked on one, you might be surprised how difficult it is for companies to write elevator pitches that anyone outside of management would give two bits about. It’s seriously hard to do. I’ve worked on elevator pitches with several companies, and it’s never been a smooth or easy process.
[Hell, I struggle with it for my own company, Bullet Consulting. I’m far from satisfied with what I’ve written so far:
At Bullet Consulting, we understand how copy and design work together to create impact. We help you discover and articulate your core message. We help you tell your story in a memorable way.
See what I mean? It probably works fine when I’m talking to other people in marketing. But it’s probably not all that compelling to someone who doesn’t know much about marketing and has hired me to do that work for them.]
I suspect one reason it’s so hard is that we’re just not that good at thinking about why our work matters. We get hung up on doing a job that’s in front of us, often a very demanding job, and we just don’t have the time or energy to think about the bigger picture. We’re focused on completing one task so we can check it off and go onto the next one.
Also, people are typically compensated on tactical execution, rather than strategic thinking. Which is to say, we get paid for doing stuff. More stuff = more reward. Hence, it’s logical for individuals to focus on the concrete aspects of the jobs they do.
It’s no different for organizations. Companies make money by selling widgets. The more widgets you sell, the more you’re rewarded. So it’s not surprising that when asked what your company does, you’re very likely to say, “We make widgets.”
As a result, one of the most difficult tasks people in marketing face is helping our employers (or our clients) tell that bigger story – the “why we matter to our customers” story. We know why is more important than what, but time and time again we fall back to what we do and we fail to explain why that matters to anyone else.