Can you answer this question? Your customers can.

At a casual business gathering this week, I overheard the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company being asked what his company did. He appeared to intentionally bite a cracker just at that moment, to buy time and think about his response. “Well, it’s complicated,” he finally replied.

This smart, educated Chief Executive Officer was elbow deep in company operations yet hadn’t an (uncomplicated) response to that 'simple' question - not because he was oblivious, of course, but because he had spent the last several years buried in finance, production runs, board meetings and other demands. Demands that took him farther and farther away from his customer, farther and farther from a good response. So when he was asked “What does your company do?”, he could only respond to the question by explaining details about the company’s software.

The ability to describe your product is a start, but it’s an answer to an altogether different question, that is, “How do you do it?”.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the question “What do you do?”, whether asked about you or your company, isn’t actually about what you do, it’s about the value you offer. “What does your company do?” is a question that summarizes several others, such as, “Who do you sell to?” “Why do customers buy from you?” and “What’s next?"

“What do you do? …to provide value to your customers?” It's not a question that only the CEO needs to know. Everyone in the company from the receptionist to the CEO should be able to articulate the company's value, because it should be the motivating factor for going to work every day. If you’ve spent the last several years being pulled farther and farther away from your customers, it is possible that you yourself may find this question harder and harder to answer.

But your customers know. It might be time to ask them.