Want more clients? Offer less.
Yeah, I know. That sounds sooooo selfish.
And you’re a giver right? You can’t stand the thought of not offering clients everything.
Well here’s a news flash:
Your clients can’t handle everything.
They don’t want products designed for everyone.
They resent being lumped in with such a big anonymous group of folks.
Cause they’re different. They’re special.
And if you try lumping them in with folks they perceive aren’t like them, they won’t commit to you.
(And something tells me you’ve been there before …)
I was speaking with a client who believed it would distinguish them if they positioned their offer as “delivering success and results faster.”
Without saying what specific success or results they were going to deliver.
Or exactly who they were going to deliver them for.
Because that would limit who they could work with, right?
Wrong.
It’s the fastest path to ensure they don’t work with anyone.
In his amazing book “Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Business, Brands and Life” Rory Sutherland observes success is not always created when you add to something.
It’s also created by what you leave out.
The Sony Walkman (remember those?) didn’t record.
Neither did the original Apple iPod.
And Google was Yahoo without all the extraneous crap on the home page.
Because while it would have added functionality, it would have confused what the device was for. And quite possibly been more difficult to justify buying or using.
If you want to get more current, some of today’s most successful social media platforms have limits:
Twitter
TikTok
Instagram
And people use them because they know what they’re for.
The good news is: People will use you (and buy from you) if they know what YOU’RE FOR.
Who you serve.
The specific problems you solve.
The specific outcomes you deliver.
The specific way you make the outcomes possible that makes you the best choice.
If you’re starting out, that means to dump the cute and clever, and position yourself as a solution to a problem people already have, are already searching for and have already demonstrated a willingness to pay for.
That can be terrifying when you help people lose weight and “the world doesn’t need another weight loss coach.”
Well, the total revenue from the weight loss industry in the US alone last year was in the tens of billions of dollars.
That’s a big enough pie that there’s a slice in there for you too.
And this is true of a bunch of other industries and niches which appear to be saturated.
Which makes the ability to distinguish yourself by offering less – a specific outcome targeted to a specific group of people – a game changer.
So if you’re gnashing your teeth because you believe this level of targeting means you won’t eat, trust me when I say:
The fortune is in the focus.
It is just as common for success to emerge as a result of removing features as it is from adding features.
If you look at the people you follow, chances are you know them by one thing (even if they’ve gone on to offer multiple things).
Remember Amazon only offered books for the first 3 years of their existence.
While trying to be everything to everyone might feel noble, its a disastrous strategy when you’re trying to get a foothold in business.
And the fastest path to being nothing to everybody.
