Focus On Your Core Competencies

Can you think of any restaurants you absolutely love? One you know you have to get to extra early because if you don’t, the line will be out the door? Then one time you go, you notice the restaurant’s décor and the menu items have both dramatically changed. Before you know it, you drive by the restaurant and there’s a “For Lease” sign in front of an empty building where the restaurant used to be.

What happened? That restaurant lost focus on its core competencies, the things making it better than its competitors. That restaurant had a good thing going, but lost focus. In no way do I mean the example restaurant should have become complacent and not considered tweaking things. The business world is a dog-eat-dog world, but you always need to stay focused on what makes you better than your competitors.

Here’s another example. I clicked on a random, local graphic design company’s site. It talked about what they do. Perfect. That gets that right out of the way. Unfortunately it uses a ton its valuable site real estate on irrelevant fluff before they ask me to contact them. I won’t. Why? Because I don’t know what makes them better than all those other graphic designers. I don’t need to know everything about you right this instant. If I did, I’d click your About page. I have a problem and I need a solution. Are your designs the hippest around? Are your up to date on all the latest standards? Do your create faster web pages? Can you create a quality web page in under a month? We’re all very busy. Tell me right away why should I choose you or call you?

It doesn’t matter what you do, you need to tell your audience why you’re better than your competition. If you make french fries, are yours the crispiest? The freshest? The thickest? What makes you the best? If you don’t tell me, you’re just like all the other generic french fry makers out there. If you sell anything at all, take a moment and type what makes you better than your competitors in a text file. Save that file on your desktop and look at it everyday. Remember, you can’t be everything to everyone.

Sound easy enough? Good! Now is the hard part. You need to follow through on your promises of what makes you better!