Focus; Don’t Spray And Pray
- Dan Greenberg
- Aug 4
- 4 min read
Have you ever found yourself thinking something along the lines of, “I better make sure to tell them about everything we can do, because what if I focus on one thing but it turns out they want something else; I might lose the deal”. I know I have done this. It is the most human of all things to do. It is a hedge, it is a way to give ourselves assurance that we have checked all the boxes and taken all the action that we could possibly take. As humans we tend to be risk averse. We tend to want to cover all of our bases and make sure that we have done everything we can. The only problem is that the “doing” is often the wrong thing to do and it can be a waste of energy, or worse, it can have adverse results in terms of what we are hoping to accomplish.
I work with a lot of companies who tell me how great their solutions are and how every company can use them to improve efficiency or cut costs, or do whatever it is that they say they help with. This may or may not be true, and it may or may not be a good message to investors, but I can tell you one thing for sure, it is not a good message to clients. If you are perceived to be giving off the message that you are good at everything and a good fit for everyone, you immediately lose credibility.
These business leaders are doing exactly what I described above. They are hedging. They are trying to position themselves to take all possible actions, and to not leave anything on the table. But the message they are sending to potential clients is that they are trying to win their business, not that they can solve their problems.
I consulted for a small services business once, and the owner of the business could not stop telling me how good his products were for all these different types of businesses (insurance companies, broker/dealers, banks, investment originators), and he wanted to use messaging like that in his marketing because he was worried that if one of the segments noticed his ad and didn’t see their industry, he would miss that opportunity. The problem is that everyone sees that message and thinks, if you are good for everyone, then you can’t be focused on me.
Similarly, I once worked with the owner of a logistics company. I was working with him on his go-to-market messaging and he told me that businesses of all sizes should use his logistics services because he can do everything FedEx does, but he can do it cheaper. I told him that the first thing that would pop into my mind if I heard that claim would either be: “then why aren’t you as big as FedEx” OR “then why hasn’t FedEx been forced to lower their prices”. It simply doesn’t matter if the claim is true or not, it does not have credibility.
Business leaders, and sellers are equally affected by this FOMO (fear of missing opportunities). Sellers often try to offer every product they can sell, to every client out there, for every situation they encounter because they worry about missing an opportunity if they impose scope limitations on themselves. I know this partially because I used to think this way.
Don’t fall into the ‘everything for everyone trap. Focus on what you do best and focus on the client you service best. Be extremely clear about what you are good at and stay on point. If you try to offer your clients a menu, they won’t pick anything because they are simply not mentally engaged enough to do your job for you, which entails thinking through their issues and slotting your expertise into their needs puzzle.
Be really clear about what you are good at, and don’t be afraid to say what you are not good at. Tell your client or prospect something you are bad at. Make a joke about it; tell them, “if that’s important to you then you should buy that from our competitor”, and name the competitor. This does two things. Number one it shows that you are not scared to bring up or compete with your competitor, and that you feel comfortable with your solutions and your place in the market. Number two, it gives you credibility when you tell them what you are good at.
Of course, when you are talking about your competitor being better than you at something you want to be smart and engineer the situation where you are talking about something that is not what you want to sell to the client. The key is to look for these opportunities because when you have the chance to position your competitor as being better at something, and effectively turn down work, when you are able to shift the conversation to what you really want to sell them, they will trust you more.
Companies must define their expertise and differentiators, and then define their target market clearly. It does not have to be small, but it has to be well defined and explainable. Then sellers need to take those definitions and further define their ideal customers, the situations where they can be most helpful, and the specific solution that they want to sell to each customer in each situation. Sellers should never be selling solutions, they should be selling one solution that fits one situation. If you spray and pray, in other words, if you try to convince your client that you are good at every solution in every situation just to make sure you don’t miss any opportunities, they won’t trust you on any of it.
For what it’s worth, there is an entire billion dollar industry built around this concept, and that is the auto insurance industry. Progressive’s Name Your Price tool seems like a benefit for the customer, but what it does is allow Progressive to gather information and decide if you, as a driver, fit their defined customer target. If they decide that you do, then they get to tell you that not everyone is a fit for them, but that they focus on customers just like you and have the best offerings for your situation.
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