Serve Someone, Anyone, Just Not Everyone

Just as you risk being a “nobody” if you fail to embrace your own uniqueness, a business fails to appeal to anyone if it attempts to serve everyone.

The way to make friends is not by trying to appeal to everyone but by being yourself and finding people you genuinely connect with. It’s the same in business. Focusing on product — and offering your product (or service) to anyone and everyone — is not effective. The history books of business prove this. You have a much better chance of building a loyal customer base if you target a very narrow customer type and attempt to serve him/her exceptionally well.

For example, say you want to sell paper. Just selling paper, of all types, to anyone who wants paper, is probably not going to cut it. More effective would be to align everything about your business to perfectly serve the wants and needs of the paper aficionado. The customer who knows and loves high-quality writing paper tends to like it customized with the finest printed inks, and is willing to wait for a quality product and pay a premium price. Or you could focus on the office assistant who wants to order basic office papers in bulk, is price sensitive, and when her office is out of paper she needs it immediately. These are two extreme cases. But, more often than not, business owners who enter “the paper business” will try to serve the entire gamut of customer types. It turns out that, more often than not, this is a failing strategy.

Less Is More

Conventional wisdom holds that “if you want the masses, welcome the masses.” But research by Gallup polls shows that the opposite is true. When a business serves a particular customer segment’s needs and wins them over enthusiastically, the result is contagious. Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson calls this “the power of the ripple effect.” People not squarely in the target group also become comfortable with who you are and what you do, so they patronize your business as well.

Focusing on your target market will:

a.    Ensure that you serve at least one group substantially well, and better than any of your competitors, and

b.    Attract members of the larger customer audience through the ripple effect.

There is a bar and restaurant near my house called Sutures. Could there be a worse name in the world? Whenever I think of the place I smell sterile hospital air. But darned if the place isn’t always packed, and I guarantee it’s not all doctors and nurses. No doubt, they appealed to medical personnel but then, over time, began to attract other people through the ripple effect. Had they called it “Larry’s Grill and Pub,” they probably would have suffered the same fate as the other five establishments that came and went broke in that location.

Focus Provides Clarity

Choosing a single customer type provides clarity to your customers and employees. In the case of your employees, it’s particularly important and powerful. A single customer type, pictured with great clarity and vividness, provides employees at all levels with a very clear image of whom they serve. It’s a great aid in decision-making and can provide a rallying cry for passionately, uniquely tailored product and service offerings. In fact, Marcus Buckingham, author of The One Thing You Need to Know, says that every manager must make sure the target customer is vividly clear, in great detail, and that the manager “must actively encourage his employees to devise novel and as yet unproven ways to of serving them.” Buckingham says, “This is the only way to keep the organization alive.”

Here are a few examples from some large, successful companies:

Company                 Customer Focus

Wal-Mart                People living paycheck to paycheck

Dr. Pepper/

Mountain Dew            People who are original, expressive

NIKE                    People who achieve

Ann Taylor              Very busy, sophisticated and polished 36-year-old woman

professional, married with two children and yearly

household income around $150,000

Oprah Magazine          Women who believe: “live your best you”

Best Buy                People who want to include technology in their lives but

don’t know how

Focus Enables Consistency

Focusing on a single customer provides clarity that managers and employees at all levels need to make decisions. When used as a guide for all decision-making, this clarity of focus manifests itself in consistent policies, practices, procedures, designs, products, services, etc. This consistency resonates with people, even those outside the target customer. Human beings feel comfortable with consistency. It’s a subconscious thing, like rhythms in music and patterns in art. People and organizations that are consistent are well-liked and successful.