Narrow Your Focus to Grow Your Sales (Part 1)
How is Hooters different from other restaurants that serve wings? Do Hooters’ wings taste better? Do they have low prices? No? Then why do people go there for wings? Hooters built a whole business around the one thing they know their target market – twenty-something men – likes. (And, it’s really not wings, is it?) The company has alienated a large swath of the population in the process but, judging from their jam-packed parking lot on a Friday night, it hasn’t hurt them a bit.
Walk into a Chuck E Cheese’s on a Friday night and you won’t see any sign of the twenty-something Hooters crowd. Everything about Chuck E. Cheese’s is designed to repel that group, but it attracts another group: children. Yet, neither the kids nor their parents will tell you they love the pizza or the prices.
Sport Clips is flourishing in this economy by creating a hair-cutting experience where, “It’s good to be a guy.” The “manly” environment created by this national franchise includes sports memorabilia and big screen TVs. Sports Clips was named top hair care franchise in 2009, and it got there without mentioning price or the experience of their stylists.
How can these businesses thrive when they don’t offer the best product or the lowest prices? They have identified a target market and customized their business to attract patrons that fit within that target – even if it means alienating or repelling other potential clients.
How have you customized your business to make it more desirable to your ideal clients? Is there a way that you have made it unattractive to the prospects that you get calls from who aren’t your ideal? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll be giving you my thoughts in part two and part three later this week.
Brad Farris is a small business advisor with Anchor Advisors, Ltd. in Chicago, Il. Since 2001 Anchor Advisors has been helping creative professional firms to grow, by helping them clarify their purpose, get the most from their people, keep their eye on key performance measures, and implement consistent processes.
Brad Farris is a small business advisor with Anchor Advisors, Ltd. in Chicago, Il. Since 2001 Anchor Advisors has been helping creative professional firms to grow, by helping them clarify their purpose, get the most from their people, keep their eye on key performance measures, and implement consistent processes.
Brad,
Great post and right on target. We call it Narrow The Focus, Expand The Yield. It’s counterintuitive to many, but when your focus excludes options, you gain more.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:52 pmThanks Brad. Great post. I’m enjoying the blog. Rob Decker just turned me on to it. It’s nice to see you doing well and also being so creative with that analytical mind of yours. This particular post made me think on Jim Collins’ work regarding Good to Great in the Social Sectors. It also made me think more specifically on how churches target and reach their ideal “clients,” but perhaps more on how they too often fail to reach anybody.
I hope you continue to do well, Brad. Thanks for your work, past – present – and future.
Dan Jones
DJ|AMDG
October 21st, 2009 at 12:59 pmDoug: I love your distinction between strategic and tactical opportunism. You’ve got me thinking there!
Dan: Thanks for your comments, good to see you here. I LOVE Jim Collins and I think that G2G for the social sectors is some of his best thinking. I agree that these ideas work for churches too, that may be why we have so many
October 21st, 2009 at 2:53 pm[...] yesterday’s post I started this series where I describe how narrowing your focus (as a company) can acclerate your [...]
October 21st, 2009 at 3:03 pm[...] you’ve been following our “Narrow Your Focus to Grow Your Sales” series you know that by narrowing your focus you can customized you business to make it [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm