When You Try To Be All Things to All People, You Become Nothing to Everybody

By Michael Masterson

It takes courage to turn away a paying customer. But sometimes that is what you should do.

Let's say you have a business that repairs car brakes. You have three mechanics who work for you. One of them is a master mechanic. He can do just about anything. Someone comes into your shop and asks you to repair his muffler. You could use the business, so you take the job.

Fast-forward one year and you have become a regular auto repair shop with no unique selling proposition. You are plenty busy, but you are not making nearly the profit you projected.

What happened?

By generalizing, you gave up three significant advantages:

* You lost the overhead savings that come from doing only one thing.

* You went from a business that had a memorable purpose to something very ordinary and forgettable.

* You gave up the high profit margins that come from specializing in one product or service.

MacDonald's sells several dozen products today. But when Roy Kroc took it over, he focused on hamburgers and fries. If he had succumbed to the temptation of turning his restaurant into a diner, he would have become just another diner owner instead of one of the most successful restaurateurs in American history.

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"People have moved beyond apathy, beyond skepticism into deep cynicism."

Elliot Richardson