Difference between "What do you do and What do you actually do"

I learnt a few life lessons from my marketing management book on selling. They say to sell on benefits rather than on its features. That is the reason we now see all products in our supermarket shelves talking about their actual use or benefit and not much of its technicalities. Shampoos say how it gives out shiny hair, health drinks talk about how it helps in improving one’s height, weight and immune system.

Now applying the same concept to our life and to our way of thinking in terms of what we do, I often notice that when someone asks  a question, “What do you do?” there will be an immediate answer like I am a sales manager in an ABC  bank or an Engineer in XYZ co. and so on. 

Not that they are wrong, in fact I would say that it is absolutely accurate. But, in order to rightly communicate our effort and significance, we need to find out what difference we are making in other people’s lives.  

So first, we need to ask ourselves couple of questions. Say for example, what you actually do as a sales manager? Then, you may have an answer like I sell mutual funds and stocks to high net worth individuals. Then ask yourself, “What does your customer get out of your service?” You may say my customers get their financial goals met by making wise investment decisions through me. And that’s it! So now you know what difference you are making in this society. Now a manufacturing engineer may say I build encoders that have sensors to stop elevators at the right time for people to get down at the right place. A teacher may say I help kids to learn a new foreign language like French or I help them to be an expert in number crunching through solving problems in Math. A stay at home parent may say I facilitate my spouse to work outside home by taking full responsibility of household chores and child care.

So now we know that it is not only social workers who have a sense of satisfaction of making this world a better place, but each one of us who strive hard every day to be productive and also make a difference in other people’s lives.