Focusing like a laser

“Don’t become a wandering generality.
Be a meaningful specific.”

Zig Ziglar –
American author, salesperson, and motivational speaker

We’re three to five decades into being an overcommunicated society, and while many of us are always working to cut through the communication clutter, we need to remember this:

You always need to focus what you offer like a laser that cuts through steel.

The curse for you multitalented people is this (and I know you are multitalented): you have so many things you’re interested in, good at, and can offer customers that you actually offer all of them at once. And end up confusing all of them to the point where they don’t choose any.

That’s the irony: customers want more choices, you give it to them like a responsible business person, and they end up buying less. Boiled down into a catchphrase: More is less, and less is more.

Even a huge company like State Farm Insurance is focused. Their logo makes it clear: auto, life, fire. Behind those three insurance focuses, they have a ton more insurance for: boats, motorcycles, business, renters, condo units, farms, ranches, flood, community associations such as condos, disability, health, long-term care, and personal property. They even have a bank and sell mutual funds.

And Progressive.com, whose TV commercials you may have seen starring Lipstick Gal, focuses on car insurance, although they also have health, homeowners, renters, condos, insurance for pets as car passengers, boats, motorcycles, RVs, snowmobiles, and Segway HTs.

A supermarket, with 30,000 to 50,000 items, is focused: their Sunday newspaper insert may feature only 100 or 200 items or 0.2 to 0.6% of their total, and it’s organized into 10 to 20 departments.

I know you don’t want to throw all the interesting offerings overboard, anymore than a supermarket wants to streamline from 50,000 to 500. So how can you tighten up your focus?

Use your elevator sales pitch, also known as an elevator speech, to identify what you want people to remember you for. (If you’re not familiar with the “elevator pitch,” think of yourself riding in an elevator from the top to bottom, next to the Big Prospect you’ve always wanted to meet. You have only a few seconds to make contact. By the way, I’ve actually pitched in an elevator, got the prospect’s attention and their business card for followup and later won their business. So the concept is real and does work.)

To give you an example, here’s my elevator pitch for my marketing consulting business:

“Hi, my name is Bill and my company is Spiral Marketers. Our slogan is: “marketing consulting with a twist.” What’s the twist, you ask? The twist is this: many companies find themselves in the No-Win situation of wanting to hire us to create more cash, but they don’t have the cash to hire us in the first place. We solve this problem for you by offering our marketing services in exchange for a percentage of equity or revenues.”

There are a ton of services behind this marketing consulting. However, it focuses like a laser on something people can remember: marketing services with no cash needed to start. (And like any good elevator pitch, it makes people curious to learn more and start asking questions, which they always do.)

Now, go back and see if what you’re presenting is short enough to get the prospect interested enough to hand over his or her business card by the time the elevator doors open.

We began with a quote about being a meaningful specific from Zig Ziglar, who’s not just an American author, but a salesperson and a motivational speaker as well. At first, he might seem to violate his own advice. For those of you who have heard of him, you may know he’s a master salesman who has distilled his sales philosophy into books, tapes, and speeches on sales techniques and keeping motivated in the often discouraging world of sales.

You can see it’s focused like a laser, and he’s a shining example of a meaningful specific.

So what do you think: Have you ever seen a business offer too many things at once? Did it confuse you? And how about yourself? Have you done the same thing to your customers? Comment below now:

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Tagged as: marketing, networking, prospecting, sales