Imagine this, you are entering the elevator after a meeting with your client at his office. You are on the 12th floor. The client is with you and his CEO happens to enter the elevator. Your client introduces you to him. The CEO asks, “What is the nature of your business?” By now, the elevator would probably have reached the 6th floor. You are left with 10 seconds to explain it as impressively, and as comprehensively as possible. What do you say?

“Where do you work?” and “What does your company do?” Do you get these questions often? I do, and sometimes it gets really frustrating. For some companies, explaining their scope of work is easy. For example, if your employer is Apple, it does not take a genius to know what your company does.

Don’t get me wrong. Answering the question of “what your company does ” is, in itself, not frustrating. However, as it happens at times, the lack of time to explain the nature of our business that is frustrating, such as when you are in an elevator with your client’s CEO. The answer to this frustration is, be prepared. For those of you who are not working in Microsoft, Nokia or any other top 10% of the Fortune 500 companies, my advice is, start to draft your elevator speech , and memorise it.  You never know when you will need it.

As a rule of thumb, an elevator speech adopts KISS – Keep It Simple and Sweet. One that is not more than 15 seconds to recite it.

Now, back to the question of “what is the nature of my (Phoenix Contact) business?”

“Phoenix Contact is a German-based manufacturer. We provide innovative solutions to the world of Industrial controls and automation with our range of products such as PLC, power supplies, industrial and PCB connectors,wireless and surge protection systems”