How to Immediately Get Someone's Interest When You Tell Them What You Do

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My mission is to change the way small business owners market themselves and it’s very important to me that I reach as many people as possible.

Transcript

How to Immediately Get Someone's Interest When You Tell Them What You Do

Hello, and welcome to the Marketing Root Work Podcast. I'm Judy Murdoch, and I am your host. Today, I am going to be talking about a topic that I think is quite important, and that topic is how to immediately get someone's interest when you tell them what kind of work you do.

So there is a lot of information out there about the best way to introduce yourself as a business owner. Most of it isn't very helpful. Take the term elevator speech. This is a term I loathe. I loathe the term because it immediately makes me feel anxious and undeserving. Anxious because there is the implied expectation that I have to try really hard to get someone's interest.

Undeserving because I worry that I'm simply not good enough to evoke that interest. And yet, if you're a business owner like me, there are many situations in which you need to talk about what you do for a living. It's part of the fabric that makes up our social interactions with other people. We need to find an, an effective way to talk about what we do when we're asked So the reaction I think most of us want is when we introduce yourself, you know, we want the other person's eyes to light up, and we want them to say, "Wow, tell me more," with genuine enthusiasm.

The thing is, unless you're an astronaut or a professional athlete, this rarely happens. Usually, people will politely say, "Oh, that's interesting," and you know they're not all that interested, and this is because we don't give them a reason to be interested. If you take a moment and you think about how you typically respond when someone asks you what kind of work you do, if you're like most people, your response is an occupational category, such as, "I'm a foot doctor," "I'm a business coach," "I'm a real estate agent."

And this information is useful to a point. When we respond with a category, we immediately communicate lots of useful information to the person asking. Most people already know a lot about our occupations, what we do, who we help, and m- why they might wanna hire us, and people learn this informally through their day-to-day experiences.

You know, you live in our culture, you know, you learn pretty quickly, um, about occupations and what they are. Here's the problem. When we respond with a category, we don't directly speak to why the person listening should be interested. Unless your listener really, really needs the help of a foot doctor or a business coach or a real estate agent, they aren't gonna be very interested.

At best, they'll take your card and hopefully remember you when they do need your help. Another limitation with categories is as soon as we share our category, we are immediately lumped in with every other person your audience knows in that category. And one of the most heartfelt concerns I hear from professional service providers is: How do I set my apart-- myself apart from the hundreds of people doing the exact same thing?

So our introductions need to communicate two things right away. Number one, why the other person should be interested, and number two, what makes you distinct from all the other people in your category. So you need what I'm calling a one-liner. A one-liner is a simple statement that immediately helps the person listening understand why they need your product or service.

And I, I wanna say, too, I wanna give credit to, um, the, um, the book Story Brand 2.0 by Donald Miller. This is where I got the, um, the one-liner idea and structure. I've said in an earlier newsletter that your potential client is the hero in your business relationship and that you are the wise, helpful guide.

Your client, the hero, has a quest, a challenge. They may not be trying to blow up the Death Star, but their situation may feel every bit as scary, frustrating, or overwhelming. You, the business owner, need to speak to your hero client's challenge in a clear, memorable way. You are promising to deliver a solution to their problem.

So here is the one-liner structure I help, and here you're going to talk about the specific person or audience that you help, who struggle with the problem that they have, so they can insert the result. So I'm gonna give you an example of what a category response is and then what a one- one-liner response would be.

So a category response would be, "I'm a realtor." A one-liner response would be, "I help first-time home buyers who are overwhelmed by record-high home prices, so they can find a home they love at a price they can afford." And, I mean, what response would resp- wh- what response would inspire you to ask, "Tell me more"?

Okay, so yes, it is formulaic, and as I said at the beginning of this newsletter, I have a lot of resistance when it comes to creating an elevator speech or a pitch. What I like about the one-liner response is the focus is on the client, their problem, and how I help. Now, I'm a very purpose... I am very purpose-led, and the reason I do what I do is because it makes me a little crazy to see so many smart, talented service providers struggle with conventional marketing.

A one-liner allows me to talk about what I do in a way that feels in alignment with my values, and it is in service to helping my right fit clients immediately understand, "Here's someone who might be able to help me." So I invite you to try out a one-liner. You don't have to do this perfectly. Come up with one or two options and use them the next time you respond to the question, "What kind of work do you do?"

And notice the difference in how the other person responds. I appreciate you. Judy Murdoch, word-of-mouth marketing expert, writer, and artist.