I recently had coffee with an independent consultant, and when I asked about the focus of her business, she provided a fairly lengthy list of services.
On the one hand, it's good that her firm is multi-dimensional because it makes it easier to serve clients with a variety of needs, and it eases any concerns they might have about dealing with a one-person operation.
On the other hand, being a jack-of-all-trades operation can be a problem: It's difficult for clients to quickly embrace what your business does and why they would hire you.
When I started ME Consulting in January, 2009, I fell into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. When people asked what I did, I rambled off everything from branding and messaging to social media strategy and tactics and content creation. When I finished, I was out of breath, and the person who asked the question still did not have a good idea of what I did.
This is what I call the "Kelsey's approach" to business. When you go into a Kelsey's restaurant, the menu is a multi-page beast. Rather than making it easier to order because they have just about everything, it's difficult to order because there are so many options.
For small businesses struggling to capture the attention of customers, it's better to adopt the "classic diner" approach, in which there are only a small number of options. This makes it quick and easy for customers to know what's available.
After struggling for months to articulate what services I offered, I finally settled on digital marketing and social media strategy. It is just a part of what I do but it gives clients and potential customers a clear idea of what's on the menu.
This makes it easier to start a conversation about how we can do business together. What inevitably happens is that once the conversation begins, the customer mentions their other needs - some of which I can serve, and some that partners or other people can do.
At the end of the day, there have been many situations where I ended up doing a variety of things for a client that were above and beyond the original valuation proposition. Of course, if I had talked about all of these services at the start of the relationship, there is a good chance the relationship would never have happened.
In other words, it is better to give customers a short and concise idea of what you do as opposed to presenting everything you do at once. By giving them a small taste at the beginning, it is easier to lead them to the "buffet" over time.
Special to the Globe and Mail
Mark Evans is a principal with ME Consulting , a content and social media strategic and tactical consultancy that creates and delivers 'stories' for companies looking to capture the attention of customers, bloggers, the media, business partners, employees and investors. Mark has worked with three start-ups - Blanketware, b5Media and PlanetEye - so he understands how they operate and what they need to do to be successful. He was a technology reporter for more than a decade with The Globe and Mail, Bloomberg News and the Financial Post. Mark is also one of the co-organizers of the mesh, meshUniversity and meshmarketing conferences.