4 Strategies for Specializing
by Ilise Benun
Many independent professionals believe that marketing the widest range of
services to the largest possible group is the path to success. You’d rather be a
generalist because you think you’ll get more business.
But in reality, it doesn’t work that way.
In fact, success comes to those who focus on the smallest number of
activities most likely to yield the quickest and largest return.
What really lets you dominate the market and get more business?
Specializing.
It is tempting to position yourself broadly, but if you want to be credible,
you must limit your offerings. Without some specialization, you can't convey a
coherent message to the marketplace, nor can you qualify potential clients
quickly, which leads to wasted time and effort.
We live in the era of the specialist. In fact, the larger your target market,
the more you need to specialize. Being a generalist, trying to be all things to
all people, doesn’t sustain long-term business growth because you never create
an identity and you never focus on a market that identifies you as their expert.
Instead, you’re a blur in the mind of your market.
In order to rise above the information overload that bombards your clients,
you must distinguish yourself from all your competitors clamoring at your
clients’ doors. The only way to make a strong enough impact in the minds of your
prospects -- so that they choose you -- is to be clear about what you stand for:
your focus or area of expertise.
If you still resist specializing, what you fail to understand is that your
clients need you to specialize in exactly the service they need.
They don’t want to be your guinea pigs.
They need to know they are dealing with an expert who serves their particular
needs, who understands the specific challenges they face. They need you to have
explicit experience that will help them.
That’s what will make them feel more comfortable choosing you. That’s what
will help them sell you to their managers.
Four Strategies for Specializing
1. Start out broad and evolve your specialty
If you have just recently started your business, you may be a generalist
simply because you don’t yet know what to specialize in. That’s fine, but as you
begin to work with your clients, be attentive to what they are asking for and
what they seem to need without knowing it. Then start giving it to them. Ask
yourself questions like: “Of all the services I offer, which one is being
requested most often? What do people seem to be the most perplexed about? What
new technology do people need to understand?”
Anticipate the needs of your clients, and evolve your business to satisfy
those needs. Start focusing your services and proclaiming your specialty as soon
as you can. It will snowball. The more you talk about it, the better the
response, which gives you more opportunities to learn more about and reinforce
your specialty.
2. Focus on an industry and offer them multiple services
Focusing on a vertical industry -- like financial services or healthcare --
allows you to market yourself the most efficiently. You will get to know the
people in the industry, who will talk to each other and spread the word about
you. You can join the main trade organizations and use the member directories,
which means that your list of prospects can be found all in one place. You can
speak at conferences sponsored by the industry to increase your visibility and
credibility. You can get your articles printed in online and offline trade
publications for maximum exposure.
In addition, you’ll be able to make the most powerful statement to your
clients: “I really know your business.” Nothing has a stronger impact. You will
become an expert not only in your business, but also in their business, which
becomes one of your most important benefits to your clients.
As you get to know them, as you watch their industry grow and change, you
also evolve your services to change with the industry, adding and subtracting
services as needed. By letting the growth flow from the needs of your clients,
you grow your business organically, which makes less work for you.
3. Focus on a special skill or talent that you have that fits a very
specific need
You also can approach your specialty from the opposite perspective: identify
your skills and talents, and then approach the prospects who may need them. This
is much less efficient because it means you have to repeat the same message, or
a slightly revised version of the same message, to different industries over and
over again. It’s hard to build momentum when you’re spinning many different
plates, so this is not the ideal strategy. But if you are expert in your
particular skill—for example, web design or video production —and you are
willing to do extra marketing of your own services, then take that as your
specialty.
4. Focus on companies of a certain size
A company’s challenges often are a function of their size. Small-business
owners face different challenges than Fortune 500 companies. They have different
budgets, different processes and more (or fewer) layers of bureaucracy. You can
market to a variety of industries if you specialize in the challenges faced by
companies of a particular size.
It Helps to Have More Than One Area of Expertise
Specializing doesn’t have to limit you to just one area. In fact, the ideal
situation is to have two areas of specialty. Then, if your particular niche
becomes the epicenter of an economic downturn, you have the flexibility and the
agility to shift gears and pursue another avenue.
Specializing also doesn’t disallow you from taking jobs that are outside your
market. But that decision often will depend on how hungry you are, what’s
currently on your plate, what projects are pending and which prospects you are
pursuing. The important thing is to be honest with your prospects about your
skills in terms of their needs. They may have heard such good things about you
that they want you anyway.
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