There’s excitement in potential, but your business also needs a boundary
You need to be wary when colleagues (or even you) resist putting a frame around your business and the value it provides.
To be clear, it’s essential for every business to have aspirational statements and a high-level vision. But these concerns can sometimes overshadow the fact that at some point, somewhere, a business needs to be able to explain to a non-expert in 5–7 seconds exactly what it does.
The resistance to this kind of plain statement can come from a love of open-ended potential. Being specific about your company’s activities might also make colleagues feel as though you’re closing a door to certain opportunities or selling your company short. This type of high-level, aspirational thinking is essential to any forward-looking business, but you must manage the impulse very carefully if you’re trying to sell a complicated or intangible good. After all, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice concrete opportunities to preserve the fantasy of infinite potential.
I’ve seen this dynamic play out many times, especially in the realms of B2B marketing and complex IT solutions. When the advocate of infinite potential resists putting a clear boundary around the business’s activities, they usually then try to describe the business in their own words. I have never seen the ensuing explanation involve fewer than five minutes of uninterrupted talking. The vast majority of businesses can’t get away with that kind of explanatory bloat when a potential customer (or relative at a barbecue) will only give you 5–7 seconds before they tune out.
You shouldn’t have to sacrifice concrete opportunities to preserve the fantasy of infinite potential.
Take for example a company like Accenture. Accenture’s entire marketing and branding strategy appears to revolve around having their name be synonymous with the word “innovation.” But how much of the public knows what they do? How much of the business community even knows what they do? Like KPMG or Deloitte, Accenture gets away with using the implied tagline, “We’re huge, and that makes you feel safe” to any would-be client. Chances are the same approach won’t work for your business.
It was the English author G.K. Chesterton who once wrote, “Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame.” You could make the same claim about a business’s brand identity, especially if you’re offering a product or working in an industry where clarity is hard to achieve. The boundary brings focus. It directs the eye. Without it, you have confusion, and confusion is death to the marketer who is trying to sell an intangible or complex product.
It was English author G.K. Chesterton who once wrote, “Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame.”
The elevator pitch exercise is one way of trying to gain clarity on the service or product you’re offering. Focusing on concrete product benefits can also help. But the job of crafting to optimal positioning for your company and product, one that’s both unique and understandable, exciting and clear, is an endless process.
If you’re having trouble describing your business, call your team into a meeting and ask them a simple question: what do you tell your friends when they ask what your company does?
The answers to this question will be very revealing. They might even be annoying to those who want to leap up and say, “But we’re so much more than that!”
If you’re having trouble figuring out how to describe your business, call everyone into a meeting and ask them a simple question: what do you tell your friends when they ask you what your company does?
If you’re so much more than that, the pro-potential advocate needs to explain why, and it needs to be tied in a clear, succinct way to the products or services you actually offer — today — now. The description of what your company does is not an aspirational statement. It needs to reflect reality. If you need to remind your team of this, just make sure to bring up the words of our old friend G.K. Chesterton, and work with your team to design the most beautiful frame you can.
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