Big Marketing Mistake No.4: be unable to say what you do in a single sentence

If someone asks you to say what the movie ‘Castaway’ was about (assuming you’ve seen it) you’d be able to do it…right?  What if they asked you to do it in one sentence?  Ok, I’ll give it a go. ‘Castaway’.  It’s about a guy who’s never got time for anything except work until a plane crash dumps him on a desert island for so long that his girlfriend gives him up for dead and marries someone else. Phew.

Easy? Actually it isn’t.  Try doing it with your favourite film.

If you found that hard, now try doing it for your business.  It suddenly gets even harder.  But there’s no getting away from it – you’ve got to be able to sum up what it is you do and quickly.  In a single sentence.  A text maybe.  A Tweet even.  What they call in business the ‘elevator pitch’.

Why do people find it so hard to say what they do?  Are they just unable to focus? Is it because they’re afraid of choosing one thing?  Or do they simply lack the confidence to put it into words?  The answer is probably all of the above and a lot more besides.  One thing’s for sure, you’re never going to learn how to do it if you don’t try.

One of the best ways to practice (and to discover if you don’t actually know what it is you do) is to get out there and do some business networking – especially the ‘breakfast’ kind.  You’ll get about a minute to tell the other people what is you do or make an arse of yourself trying.

Of course, you don’t have to practice saying exactly what it is you do – but don’t expect the work to flood in if you don’t.  I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how much they like you people can’t buy from you if they can’t work out what you’re selling.