One of the biggest mistakes I see sales professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs make is they fail to target a specific audience or niche within the overall market.

What happens when you target everybody as a prospect?

You chase bad fits, appear desperate and spread yourself too thin.

You don’t understand them as well as you would if you studied them in great detail.

You lump every prospect into the same broad group. That in turn repels certain prospects instead of attracting them.

Your sales suffer as a result although common wisdom would seem to suggest the opposite. The bigger the pond, the more likely big fish are in it, right?

Who Makes More Money?

Think about this … who makes more money? An ER doctor or a heart surgeon? Granted, an ER doctor has to have a wider breadth of knowledge and may be a better overall doctor for a bigger group of people, but a heart surgeon is highly specialized on one organ within the body … the most vital organ.

Here’s the million dollar question: Who would you rather have performing open heart surgery on you?

A paving company or a bridge builder? A paving company may get more consistent business throughout the year, but what happens when a bridge needs to be rebuilt or constructed from scratch? Not everybody can build a bridge so they can charge a heck of a lot more than a general paving contractor who paves roads.

It’s Like Building a House …

Here’s another example you can probably relate to:
I just had a house built from the ground up. It took about four months, and I paid special attention to the various trades that came to work on my house so I would know who to call down the road if there were problems or additional work to be done.

I noticed the guys who did the foundation also did the foundation for all the other builders in the neighborhood. That’s all they do though. They don’t do framing, roofing, brick laying, drywall, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, etc.

JUST FOUNDATIONS.

Now, do you think they make more money just doing foundations or would they make more if they did all of those other things?
By specializing, they’re far more attractive to every builder in the area than if they tried to build the entire house.

Does that make sense?

By specializing they get all of the business for that one function versus getting a couple of complete buildouts here and there because they’re not spreading themselves too thin.

The more complexity you add to the mix, the harder it is to be really good at any one thing.

Niche Your Marketing, Not Your Business

Don’t get me wrong, you always want to target an audience big enough to supply you quality prospects for a long time. You just don’t want to go after “everybody” though.

Besides, you don’t have to niche your entire business, rather niche your marketing.

It’s as simple as that.

Pick out an industry or specialty where you’ve had tremendous impact for your clients.

You know, one where the case studies are far more impressive than any other industry or type of client.

Focus on going after identical prospects to your best clients for 60-90 days.

I’m betting you’ll have far more success than you ever thought possible by narrowing your focus versus expanding it.

Why Most Don’t Focus on a Niche

Now, most people fear focusing on a niche for three reasons:
1. They’re convinced they’ll miss out on opportunities. Believe it or not, you’ll discover more opportunities the more you niche.
2. They claim to like the variety. Think back to the point I just made about the foundation guys … they make far more just doing foundations than they would trying to build the whole damn house. 

Why? Because they’re really good at foundations. Otherwise every builder wouldn’t use them. 

Make sense?
3. They’re afraid they’ll get stuck in or married to one portion of the overall “pie.” 

This was one of the main reasons I didn’t target one specific niche or narrow my focus until recently. I didn’t want to be branded as “just an SEO guy” or as only a B2B lead generation guy. 

Truth is, my expertise would serve any industry very well, but if I’m all over the damn place, nobody picks up on that instinctively. 

This is one of the main counter arguments for focusing on one specific niche. Your prospects will understand the value you bring without much hand holding.

What Niching Does For You

Simply put, niching makes it easier to reach a deal instead of harder.

When it’s easier to close a deal, you build momentum.

When you build momentum, you become unstoppable.

When you become unstoppable, you make a lot more money with less effort so you can enjoy the fruits of your labor more.

Does this make sense?

Give It a Try!!

Go ahead, try niching your marketing for the next 60-90 days and see what happens. If your results don’t improve significantly, you can always return to the way you’re doing business today. Right?

So what would niching do for you? Go ahead and share your initial reaction in the comments below.