I recently had my ass handed to me by a woman at a recent networking event that asked me the age old networking question, “what do you do?”. I launched into a typical, relatively long-winded response. Little did I know that she is a branding and PR expert who has worked with politicians and other VERY well known/notorious individuals.
After verbally neudering me me for several minutes in front of a handful of peers, she offered up some awesome advice:
If you can’t describe what you do in 15 words or less, nobody cares.
You have, literally, 8 seconds to be able to catch someone’s interest. If you can’t do it in a shorter period of time than that in a way that resonates with people, you’re SOL.
The logic being that you are trying to start a conversation. You need to figure out very quickly if you catch their interest, or if you need to move along to the next person.
So, in that light iab’s “I make new products” is pretty good.
I have been using “I help people bring their product ideas to reality” with some good success. Delivery is definitely key. I am sure there are several people that I lost, especially shortly after transitioning to this thought process because I stumbled on my words. I was unsure about it.
Now, it pretty much just rolls out. You can tell almost instantly if they’re interested, or if asking you what you do was a rhetorical question.