Feb16
Finding Your Focus: Two Critical Steps
Here’s an actual sign atop a small business I ran across while on vacation a few weeks ago. It makes you wonder, do you get a massage BEFORE or AFTER you get your taxes prepared?
This is a classic example of a small business trying to do too much. And it’s the primary reason small businesses struggle. They do one thing for one customer one week, another thing for another customer the next, and a third thing for a totally different customer after that, never specializing with one kind of customer or one kind of service.
Small businesses do this under the grave misconception that this what they need to do to survive. It achieves just the opposite. It spreads their limited resources an inch deep and a mile wide, never really serving anyone with the depth and quality it takes to build a loyal following.
“The primary reason for a small company’s failure is trying to do too many different things at once. If you do one thing, and do it well, you can build a reputation that almost guarantees success in the long run,” marketing expert, Al Ries, states in his book entitled simply, Focus.
Here are two steps to help you find your focus:
STEP ONE: Who is your core customer?
The first step in finding your focus is knowing who your core customer is. Who is that specific segment of the marketplace you are seeking to reach? Are they male or female? Young or old? Looking for a great deal or wanting to save time? What gets them excited? What keeps them up at night? What do they really want from a business like yours?
You must know the answers to these questions, and many more like them. You must become an expert on your customer and be able to state in a clear, identifiable way exactly who they are and exactly what makes them tick.
STEP TWO: What is your unique contribution?
The second step to finding your focus is knowing how you will serve your core customer. Be careful here, not any old product or service will do. What you provide your customer must improve their life in some way. You must make a meaningful contribution to the marketplace.
And, because the marketplace is cluttered with choices that all look the same, that contribution must also be unique. If you sat at a table with 12 spoons and one of them was gold, which spoon would you choose? All of the spoons would fulfill the same function, but the gold one caught your eye because it was different. Right?
When you follow these two steps, you will be on the way to finding your focus. You will become known for being THAT business that does THAT thing better than anyone else. In other words, you will have become an inch wide and a mile deep instead of an inch deep and a mile wide.
