A few years ago I started working with a client, she is a financial advisor on the East Coast, USA, who was having a struggle establishing her business. For the sake of confidentiality, I will call her Amy.
Now, Amy is a bright, intelligent, articulate lady who had worked successfully as an accountant, but had parked that career for marriage and children.
Sadly, the marriage did not endure and at 50 years of age she found herself in need of getting back into the workplace, and being a financial advisor suited her due to the ability to work flexible hours.
As I said, Amy is a smart lady but her business was only just ticking along, and not where she wanted it to be.
Let me tell you – skill, intelligence and presentability were most definitely not an issue for Amy! But what was an issue? Focus!
We worked through the whole target market process, which I shared with you two weeks ago, and also what the difference was between your target market and your niche – as I shared with you last week. (You can check that out here if you missed it).
After much analysis and discussion about where the 3 worlds of her knowledge, her passion and her talents merge, Amy decided that her specialized niche was – provide retirement planning for professional women over 45 years of age!
I thought it was brilliant, but what was really funny was Amy’s first comment – “That was so obvious – what took me so long to come to that conclusion?”
In her first year after this shift, she doubled her income – and did that again last year. The power of focus!
Some months back, when we were working on her 90 Day Plan, I asked her how she would articulate how beneficial it had been to her to have found her specialist niche, and she shared 5 brilliant reasons with me.
They are:
- These professional women know that I am dedicated to them – that my business is completely focused on providing an excellent service to them.
- They know that I understand their needs, desires, challenges and opportunities.
- I know where to find them – both online and offline. Online they congregate in the same groups on LinkedIn etc. and in the same online forums. Offline they tend to belong to similar organizations. As a result I know here to aim my marketing.
- They have their own natural network – so it is so easy to get referrals.
- It has enabled me to build my own platform and become an authority in my area of specialization.
I could not have articulated that any better!
So, can you talk about your specialized niche as clearly as Amy? Does your marketing and business development have the same level of focus?
What is the specialized service you provide to your target market?