Q. What is the most important step in that process?
You have to focus on doing
one thing better than anybody
else does. Very often, companies are unclear in what exactly they are trying to be great at.
If it is not clear to your people, your customers and your
targets what it is that makes
you better than anyone else and a better choice for what
you are trying to sell, then
there’s not really a reason to
exist. So focus on doing one
thing better than anybody else.
It makes it easier to run the
business because it lets you
know what kind of people that
you need to hire. You want to
find people who are good at
that one thing. It directs you
on how you’re going to train
your people, what you’re going
to teach them and what you’re
personally going to be good at.
That is an overriding characteristic.
Q. What are the benefits and
challenges of maintaining your
focus?
Getting back to our core
competency allowed us to be
able to train people and get
them to understand a particular business. Our growth
began to take off and move
forward when we did that.
It’s a cycle that keeps self-fulfilling: We get good people
and give them good accounts
to work on, they do a good
job, we get better accounts,
and we get more good people.
The hardest part is saying no
to things that don’t fit in your
core competency. We don’t turn
accounts down but we have to
say no to marketing ourselves
as experts to things that aren’t
in the core competency.
We might want to suddenly
begin to tout that we have a
lot of database expertise
because we did a database
project. We can do it, and we
can handle the work, but we
don’t want to go out and sell
ourselves as database experts.
Saying no to those things
when there are opportunities
out there is a really hard thing
to do. You have to do that, or
you end up being scattered all
over the place and not great at
anything.
HOW TO REACH: SBC Advertising, (614) 255-2333 or www.sbcadvertising.com
