Start by doing one thing well

When you are new in business, it can be tempting to offer multiple products or services and do as much as possible, assuming that will lead to more sales opportunities.

In my opinion, it is always best to start with one product or service offering and do it really well before you expand too much.

If you are trying to offer too many things, it can get overwhelming and one or more could end up being unsuccessful.

You could spread yourself so thin that you don’t end up achieving your desired results.

This, in turn, could impact your reputation, leave you with unhappy clients and you can wind up feeling burned out.

Successful examples of businesses that have chosen one thing and done it REALLY well are:

Google – the greatest search engine on the planet.
Twitter – tell the world what is on your mind in 140 characters or less.
Pinterest – a global online pinboard.
These businesses have proven that when you do one thing and do it well, your energy is concentrated solely on customer acquisition and service.

My opinion of doing one thing well also extends to what strategies you implement for your sales and marketing etc.

I’ve had clients who’ve wanted to develop new offerings because their current one isn’t delivering the results they’d like.

When they come to me with this issue, my first questions usually are:

Did you do your market research before you launched?
Have you established a need for your product or service?
What strategies have you tried so far?
How long have you been trying?
Often the answers are along the lines of, yes, yes, lots and feels like forever!

I know straight away that their issue is trying too many strategies and not giving any one strategy enough time to actually measure the results and see what worked and what didn’t etc.

My analogy for this approach to business is “like throwing spaghetti at the wall and not waiting to see if anything sticks!”.

When faced with this issue, my advice always is, go back to basics, be consistent, be visible, deliver value, keep promoting your product or service and give it 3 months.

The things we focus on tweaking are:

the key message, the copy, content and the offers.
the marketing strategy; and
the sales process.
In business, the outcome of doing something well is happy customers, repeat customers, referrals, great testimonials etc.

Assuming your product or service is great, here are my 5 tips to guarantee a happy customer:

– Respond as quickly as possible – one of the biggest factors in good service is speed. A good practice is to set expectations by saying within what timeframe you’ll respond.

– Get to know your customers – really engage and connect with them. I ask my customers to complete a questionnaire before they even start working with me, so when we first speak I know a lot about them and am able to connect and build rapport quickly.

– Fix any mistakes urgently – we all make mistakes and the sooner you acknowledge and fix the mistake the better.

– Go the extra mile – this will not only result in an indebted and happy customer, it can also go a long way in terms of keeping yourself on their radar for future business.

– Think long term – by keeping customers happy, they will be loyal and through word of mouth, will do your marketing for you.

Own Your Goal!

p.s I’d love to hear your take on this topic. Did you start your business with one thing that you focused on doing well?

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It might be the spark they need to give their goal a real go.

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