So what do you do?

On the morning of the first day I said what I usually say to CEOs, "So what does your company do?" It's a deliberately vague question but the CEO was confident that he and all 12 members of his executive team would be able to answer it - and be relentlessly on-message for external audiences like prospects, customers, partners, and the press.

He was wrong.

I videotaped 13 different answers. Sure there were some common elements but it was clear that the fabric of the answer was stitched together in a pretty haphazard way. The next day I played back 7 minutes of footage showing all 13 executives describing what their company does. It wasn't pretty. After that, I showed them how their competitors were describing themselves. And then I showed them a draft of what I thought they should be saying.

There was a brief, pregnant silence in the room.

"That's it. You nailed it," said one of the company founders.

We talked about nuances and details, but it was clear the company's elevator speech needed to be far more conversational, a lot shorter, a lot more consistent and much more of a narrative. We needed to lose the jargon, the platitudes and the "leading provider" syndrome. And we did.

Afterward the CEO of this mid-stage software company buttonholed me in the hall. "You know, if you hadn't shown us how we looked on video I never would have believed you." I smiled.

"That's why we did," I said.

There are 100s of companies - big and small - who can't clearly articulate what they do and why anyone should care. It makes me nuts (and I'm not the only one - here's one reporter's take on the matter: http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/business/s_294201.html ). Even if the CEO has a good corporate elevator speech, other executives often don't - which leads to inconsistencies in the answer to that simplest of questions.

"So what does your company do?"

Can you answer the question? If not, here's one way to develop it - http://www.elevatorspeech.net/

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