How do you answer the question – “what do you do?”

If you attend an event where you are meeting strangers, you will be asked this question – ‘so what do you do?’.  At this point do you say state the features of the service you provide?…e.g.  I am an accountant. Or do you state the benefits of the service you provide? 

 

E.g. I help my clients pay the legal minimum amount of tax, not a penny more, not a penny less.

So, which is it? You need to state the benefits of the service you provide, in one short ‘sound bite’ or tag line. E.g.

“I help professional advisors achieve better results for less effort” OR

“I help professional advisors generate more profitable revenue for the same amount of time”


By talking about the value you bring to your clients early in the conversation, you are emphasising the benefits of your service rather than the features. After all, every salesperson will tell you that people buy benefits not features.

Try to use an opening sound bite describing the value you bring to your clients, you may worry that the other person wouldn’t know what we do & this is a genuine concern, though, whenever this type of opening is used, the next question is ‘oh, that sounds interesting, how do you do that?’. And then you are off, the conversation is started, and you have moved straight into a business conversation.

So, what would your opening sound bite be?