Elevate your elevator speech

"How do you respond when someone asks, “What do you do?”

Most people reply, “I’m an accountant,” or, “I’m a writer.” What follows is usually a polite nod, an awkward silence or a blank stare.

Everybody has pre-conceived notions about accountants, and writers, and every other profession. If Bob hated his first chiropractor, he may hold resentment toward all chiropractors. By simply naming your professional category, you immediately put yourself into a stereotype based on the other person’s experience.

Citing your professional category is also boring, and can potentially elicit a dead-end response.

You need to answer, “What do you do?” in a way that initiates a meaningful conversation..." [for the rest of article go to http://bit.ly/EBCEM]

I plan to use the suggestions and respond better when asked.  Some working ideas might sound like this:

• Have you ever been in a workplace learning event and experienced learning WOWs or OMG moments?  My role is to create a lot of those events for the audience.
• When people or companies have problems they often already know the solutions.  I facilitate the conversations of others to discover those answers sooner than later.
• Thanks for asking for my card.  And would you let me provide you some additional information on the topics we just discussed.  There are some interesting developments in that area.

And consider not answering the questions right away.  Flip it back to the questioner with "Let me answer after I hear what you do.  I can better explain my role after hearing from you"

I will let you know how it works.  Let's get elevated.  I want to get on the express ride to the top.

Posted via email from Doug's posterous