Your specialization will naturally occur when you take yourself up a learning curve by digging into a focused area, and you start to really excel. As you practice this repetition, you’ll experience speed, enhanced knowledge, and super-high process flow. All of which will lead you to a better reputation and referrals as an expert in the industry you are working.
I had an interesting reminder of this when I read a LinkedIn article, shared by Verne Harish in his recent blog. The article, written by Tim Williams, was titled The Best-in-Class Approach to Brand Marketing. Tim starts by posing the question, “What is the top reason marketers search for a new advertising agency?” Even though “creative differences,” “cost,” or “poor service” were mentioned, it was “the best-in-class specialists” that was the number one reason sited.
Tim says that in today’s complex world, trying to take care of everything for everyone doesn’t meet realistic expectations. There are two ways to focus your expertise – either in a certain competency or through expertise in a market. So what it boils down to, is that markets aren’t buying a service, they are buying a solution. A solution that will solve their pains, or as we discussed in last week’s blog, do the job the client is trying to get done.
When Efficience was more of a custom software company, we built different types of software applications for people in different industries. This was hard since our team had a stiff learning curve with each new company, its systems and its industry – definitely not the right way to have success. As we began to focus on mobile apps, we found ourselves on a much better path. Now, we are building apps that integrate into an ERP system for a company called Infor. We are also honing in on companies within the cleaning distribution business that use Infor. This is helping to provide the opportunity to scale, and allowing them to tell a story within a target audience that is likely to share it. And in the process, Efficience is growing.
What are you focusing on and specializing in that helps you to have the best-in-class status for your respective products or services?
bounceit!™ Update: This past week, an article on mobile apps was put out by the Knoxville News Sentinel and also picked up by Bloomberg. Check out the live news story aired on WLTV. Also, we pushed to the app store a new release with a few important changes to share and use, along with some design changes. Check it out! Gary Hardin, CEO of bounceit! ™, has had many meetings with investors and good-sized chunks of money have started coming in to support changes and marketing. Gary and Rick Metzelder will be at Everywhere Else, in Cincinnati, to showcase the app. We are excited bounceit!™ is the official voting mechanism used for the conference.