Hi folks,
When I was a consultant and had business development objectives, I was super focused on networking. One of the things I needed to do well was concisely articulate my value and the value of my team. These were my elevator pitches.
For instance, at Mandiant my pitch was:
I work at Mandiant. We’re a boutique cybersecurity company focused on detecting and responding to state-sponsored corporate espionage. I’m responsible for client service delivery to all of our managed service clients – I lead a team of 10 managers who serve over 100 clients across the globe and across industries, ranging from Fortune 10 to small non-profits.
Not the best, but it’s relatively concise (it takes about 15 seconds to deliver) and it generally gets the idea across – “this is my identity, this is what we/I do, here’s an allusion to some bona fides.” It’s a lightweight version of a mission statement.
Now that I’m a Fed, there’s a lot less pressure to expand my network. I no longer live in fear of missing out on the one great contact that will pave my path to making partner. So I got lax about practicing my elevator pitches. In fact, if you ask me today the quintessential DC question “what do you do?”, my answer is a rambling, James Joyce-style stream of consciousness that leaves you wishing you had never asked.
That needs to change. Not just for me, for many of our organizations.
That’s where a mission statement effort comes into play. Based on a recent internal stakeholder survey, people apparently aren’t clear on who my division is, what we do, what’s our value. Everybody on our team needs to be able to concisely and uniformly articulate this.
We need to get really good at telling people how awesome we are.
As a senior official once told me, “if you don’t tell your story, somebody else will and you may not like what they say.”
So we’re working on that story now.
Rex