What business are you in?

Every day, people ask each other, “How are you?” The questioner, not really wanting to know the details of your sore back or other troubles, expects to hear, “I’m fine, and how are you?”

Almost as frequent is the question, “What do you do?” If you work as a police officer, firefighter, nurse, or carpenter, it’s pretty clear what you do. For those of us in the consulting business, it’s harder to give people a true picture of what we do.

I recently introduced a colleague to a friend. Once we established that everyone was fine, the friend asked:

 
“So, what do you do?”

“I’m a consultant”

“Cool, what kind of consultant are you?”

“An IT consultant”

“What type of IT consulting do you do?”

“I mostly manage large IT projects”

“What types of IT projects do you manage?”

“I help clients design and implement new software”

“Do you work in any particular industry?”

“Yes, I work for telecommunications companies, usually.”

“I see.”

Did that friend—who, by the way, might be a potential client—really learn what the consultant does to help clients?

What if my colleague answered the what-do-you-do question by saying, “I manage projects that help clients reduce the time between customer billing and collections, which improves their profitability.”

 When someone says I’m a plumber, the benefit is obvious. When someone asks what do you do, is it equally obvious?