How to decide where to specialise?
Just because your product or service offering can serve many industries, doesn’t mean you should. According to Corey Quinn, the benefits of doubling down on one vertical market far outweigh the benefits of being a generalist. In this week’s episode we discuss this and ways to help you decide who you should specialise in.
Branding Before Breakfast Ep 184 How to decide where to specialise?
Good morning. My name is Kiri, I’m the Business Growth Strategist here at Tiny Hunter. This week I’ve been listening to Corey Quinn talk about his latest book ‘Anyone Not Everyone’ which is all about finding a vertical market to specialize in and really doubling down. And it got me thinking about a client we’re currently working with who have a great offering that could work across multiple industries. And it’s true, it probably would bring them a lot of work. But just because what you do can serve everyone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. In fact, according to Quinn, the benefits of specializing in an industry far outweigh the benefits of being a generalist and serving everyone.
Today, I’m not going to talk to you about the benefits of specializing. I want to do that in another episode. I’m going to talk to you today about how it is you decide to specialize in one industry over the other. The first thing you need to do is a little bit of data mining. So have a look at your customer data and you’re really looking for patterns or trends in retention. Who are those clients that are more likely to stay with you for longer. They have longer contract lengths. And also we want to look at revenue. Who are those ones that are spending? The next thing you want to look at is market trends. Does this vertical make sense? Is it an industry that is in decline or is it an industry that’s on the up? And lastly, are there enough businesses in this industry to sustain you for the long term? And Quinn talks about this sweet spot with industries you should have no fewer than 2,000 businesses in the market, but no more than 10,000. So it’s finding that sweet spot, in terms of numbers. And lastly, and I think this one is so important, does this industry genuinely interest and inspire you? It’s so important that you find joy and fulfillment in your work. You need to ask yourself, is this industry going to bring me and my team happiness?
That’s it from me, it’s time for brekkie.
Written by: Kiri White
Published: May 8, 2024