Advice: So, what do you do?

Just like the bad pick-up lines from days gone by (shudder), your opening line to a prospective customer can sometimes be a make-or-break thing: it’s the first opportunity you have to get across what you do with a bit of passion, and a bit of flair.

This first contact is often called the ‘elevator pitch’ – if you only have 30 seconds to explain your business to someone you’ve never met, how would you do it?

All it takes is a little navel-gazing, a little pre-planning, and some guinea-pigs to practice it on… Ready? Let’s take a quick look!

Don’t have an elevator pitch? Get one.

There’s no crime in not having a good opening line to explain your business, but it’s nice to have one or two up your sleeve. And by ‘one or two’, I do indeed mean ‘more than one’.

Different situations call for different explanations: in social situations; with family & friends; or indeed with ripe plum prospective customers, who can already talk your lingo – each case needs a different approach.

The bare minumum is to at least communicate your core business competencies and at least some aspect of a location or region that you operate in.

“I run a florist business in Drysdale” would get you a passing mark, but not an A or an A+. It would tell your prospective customer both *what* do you and *where* you do it, but the person who you’re talking to may be able to get far more information from your business card than from such a simple opening line!

Too short/too boring? Spice it up!

OK – imagine you’re in a wonderful situation: either all your marketing and advertising has worked, and you’re now talking to a real, live prospective customer – or you’re now talking to a potential lead in a business networking environment. In either case, you’re a real, live human being who is passionate about their business, talking to another real, live human being – let’s go to the next level and communicate some of those passions, ey?

The go the next step in explaining what you do, expand on your core competencies, and add in your value proposition. Yep, marketing speak alert: ‘value proposition’ is simply the combined benefits of what your *customer will get*, as opposed to *what you do*.

So instead of saying “I’m a builder in Ocean Grove”, you can now approach it from your customer’s point of view, and say “I help people build their dream home in and around the Surf Coast.”

You’ve killed two birds with one stone: you’re coming across with passion and enthusiasm, as well as expressing the *benefits* of what you do in real terms.

Is it too long winded? Try the Twitter-test…

Don’t go the ‘other direction’ with your elevator pitch, and turn your quick summary into a short speech – there’s a reason the Good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth – an opportunity to speak with a potential customer is actually more about listening than it is about speaking.

Practice your opening line, refine it over time, and slowly try some variations to see what brings that spark of understanding the quickest – but if you see their eyes clouding over, then apply the ‘Twitter Test’.

Twitter, like an SMS, only allows a certain number of characters per message. For Twitter, it’s 140 characters, for an SMS it’s 160.

So fire up, Twitter, or your mobile phone, or even Word with a word/character count turned on, and try to write a summary of your business that’s *exactly* 140 characters long. No more, no less.

It’s a process that forces you to pick and choose your words extremely carefully, to swap out the less important filler words for more dynamic adjectives and verbs.

Let me have your best 140-character business summary and I’ll promote them on my web site and pick a winner to publish here next month: tweet them to @allroundniceguy, or leave it in comments on my web site.

I’ll compile them all on the comments to this article on my web site as free advertising – so fire away with your best business pick-up lines, and I’ll pick the best one to win a prize…

AB out