Focus—It’s Simple, But It Ain’t Easy

Here’s what I tell entrepreneurs all the time—both those whom I’ve taught in my class and those for whom I’ve worked over the past 20 years:

Be focused . . .

. . . make the hard choices needed to be uniquely the best for your customer!

It sounds so easy.  It is simple, but almost no one finds it easy, I’ve found.

Presuming you want to be the best at something, why would you allow anything else to get in the way?

Every minute you spend doing something else, distracts you from being the best.  Every dime you spend on something that isn’t part of your focus is 10 cents less you have to invest in furthering your focused strategy.  And both your customers and your competition will know and make you pay for your lack of focus.

You have to define who your customer is.  You do that by defining as many of the following which make a difference to those who want your offering, including by :   geography, purpose, income, gender, education, taste, the type of car they drive, etc.  Many of those won’t apply in different situations, but by narrowly defining who your target customer is, many of the rest of your choices will be a lot easier . . . and more likely the correct ones. 

If you want to open a sign shop, for instance, you might have to decide whether your target customer is the administrative departments of the local university or the local businesses on Main Street in your town—as each may have very different needs.  The university might need high volume to post around campus, while stores need quicker turnaround and higher quality prints–requiring two different sets of processes in your business.  If you choose one and keep compromising your practices to serve the other, without charging them more, you will suffer indeed.

Another choices is, what are the one or two most important things to that target customer at which you can be the best?  Broadly, these are: 

• highest quality,
• best service or
• lower price

. . .  (but it goes a lot deeper, of course).  Usually, you can only offer two of those.  If you try to offer all three, you are all but guaranteed to lose loads of money.  In that case, you won’t be around to please customers. 

I’ve seen many, many entrepreneurs not making enough choices, thinking they can do it all . . . but they always end-up struggling, not knowing why they can’t make any money.

If you open your sign shop’s doors and get the best materials and offer quick turnaround, you will get destroyed if you also don’t charge for these premiums. 

The key is understanding what your target customer’s pain is.  What are the most important one or two elements to making a customer happy in meeting their needs?

Are the stores on Main Street tired of waiting a week for their signs?  If so, how much is it worth it to them to make the switch to someone who can do a great job in just a few hours?

And don’t ever underestimate that:  switching costs, that is . . . the “cost” to your target customer to switch to you.  It’s hard for prospective customers to take a chance on the unfamiliar when what they have now, while not ideal, still works.  You have to be that much better at addressing what’s must important to that target customer, than what they are currently doing.

So, what’s most important to your target customer?  I don’t know—you’d better ask them! 

Good Luck and remember:  Stay Focused!

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