Stop Trying to Serve Everyone #180
For a long time, I thought being able to help lots of different businesses was an advantage.
More industries.
More services.
More types of clients.
More opportunities to make a sale.
It sounds logical.
Why would I deliberately reduce the number of people who could potentially buy from me?
I've made this mistake myself.
Someone comes along with a problem you know you can probably solve.
They have the money.
You can do the work.
So you say yes.
Then somebody else comes along from a completely different industry wanting something slightly different.
You say yes again.
Before long, you're trying to be relevant to everyone.
And that's where the problems start.
Your messaging gets broader.
Your sales conversations become less specific.
Your delivery gets more complicated.
Your case studies don't always match the prospects you're speaking to.
And your business can become harder to operate even while revenue is increasing.
Over time, I've learned that there is an important difference between:
being capable of helping someone
and
building your business around helping them.
You don't have to serve everyone you could possibly help.
In many cases, the better decision is to become extremely valuable to a smaller group of the right clients.
Start With the Clients You Help Best
I wouldn't start by randomly choosing a niche because somebody told you that you need one.
Start with evidence.
Look at your existing and previous clients.
Who gets the strongest results?
Who values what you do most?
Which problems do you understand particularly well?
Which clients are enjoyable to work with?
Where is delivery easiest?
Which engagements are most profitable?
Which clients stay?
And perhaps the simplest question of all:
If I had ten more clients exactly like this one, would I be happy?
You're looking for patterns.
That might be a particular industry.
It might be a certain company size.
It could be the stage of the business.
The buyer you deal with.
Or it could simply be a specific problem that appears repeatedly across several industries.
This is why defining your ideal B2B client matters.
Your ideal client shouldn't just be somebody who is theoretically capable of buying from you.
It should be the type of organisation where your expertise has a particularly strong chance of creating value.
Trying to Serve Everyone Makes Your Message Weaker
One of the first things that happens when you try to serve everyone is your messaging starts to become vague.
I've seen this many times.
A business says:
We help companies with strategy, growth, marketing, sales, technology and transformation.
That might all be true.
But the buyer still has to figure out:
What exactly can you do for me?
Compare that with something much more focused:
We help B2B founders improve discovery conversations so more qualified opportunities turn into signed deals.
It's narrower.
But it's also much easier to understand.
The right buyer can immediately recognise whether it is relevant.
I've increasingly moved toward a simple principle in my own work:
One problem. One solution. One offer.
That doesn't mean you literally can't do anything else.
It means you give the market something clear to associate you with.
Your buyer shouldn't have to examine everything you've ever done and then work out which part might apply to them.
Do that work for them.
Focus Makes Your Proof More Relevant
Your proof improves too.
Imagine you're choosing between two providers.
One has worked with 30 completely unrelated companies.
The other has worked with ten businesses very similar to yours and solved versions of the exact problem you're experiencing.
Who feels safer?
Usually the second.
Not necessarily because they're more intelligent.
The experience simply feels more transferable.
Their testimonials are more relevant.
Their examples are more relevant.
Their case studies are more relevant.
Their language sounds familiar.
You can see yourself in the evidence.
I've come to believe that five highly relevant case studies can be far more valuable than fifty testimonials that have little relationship to the buyer you're speaking with.
You want your prospect to think:
They understand businesses like mine.
They understand this problem.
They've done this before.
That's a powerful position to be in.
Your Sales Conversations Get Better
This is where focus starts to become much more than a marketing decision.
When you repeatedly speak to similar buyers with similar problems, you begin recognising patterns.
You've heard versions of the problem before.
You understand common root causes.
You've seen the consequences.
You know where companies usually get stuck.
You understand the unintended consequences of particular decisions.
And you begin to know which questions are worth asking.
That changes your discovery conversations.
You're still not making assumptions.
Every buyer is different and you still need to diagnose their particular situation.
But you're diagnosing from a much stronger starting point.
This is one of the reasons greater specialisation can increase credibility and help buyers understand when your expertise is relevant. I've explored that positioning decision separately in Specialist vs Generalist Positioning for B2B Founders.
The important distinction in this article is what happens after you've decided to focus.
Your accumulated experience starts improving the quality of the conversation.
Your Sales Process Becomes More Relevant
If you know the type of buyer you want to work with, you can build the sales process around them.
You don't need a generic sales presentation designed to work for ten completely different industries.
Your questions become more relevant.
Your examples become more relevant.
Your proposals become more relevant.
Your demos become more relevant.
Your case studies become more relevant.
The buyer should increasingly feel:
This process was designed for businesses like ours.
That's very different from trying to throw every possible service, benefit and capability into the conversation and hoping something lands.
It also makes personalisation easier.
Not fake personalisation such as putting the company name at the top of a slide deck.
Real personalisation.
You understand their world well enough to know what tends to matter.
Then you use discovery to understand exactly what matters in this particular situation.
Focus Can Change the Way You Price
Another thing I've learned is that broad businesses often end up selling inputs.
Hours.
Days.
Tasks.
Deliverables.
The buyer is effectively paying for your time.
But the buyer usually doesn't actually want ten hours of consulting.
They want something to change.
Maybe they want:
more signed deals
less operational risk
greater profitability
a faster process
fewer errors
more revenue
a bottleneck removed
a commercial problem solved
That outcome is what matters.
When you repeatedly solve similar problems, it becomes easier to understand the commercial value of solving them.
You have more context.
You have more evidence.
You know what is involved.
You understand the risks.
You understand the likely business impact.
That allows the pricing conversation to move away from:
How many hours will this take?
toward:
What is solving this problem actually worth?
That doesn't mean ignoring the cost of delivering the service.
Margins matter.
But your price shouldn't automatically be determined by how long something takes.
In fact, experience frequently enables you to solve something faster.
The buyer shouldn't penalise you for becoming better at your job.
Delivery Becomes Easier
This part is often overlooked.
Imagine having 20 clients and each one buys something completely different.
Different processes.
Different expertise.
Different reporting.
Different systems.
Different staff requirements.
Different expectations.
That's difficult to operate.
Now imagine 20 clients with similar characteristics who buy a similar service to solve a similar problem.
You start to learn.
You develop better processes.
Better templates.
Better frameworks.
Better questions.
Better implementation sequences.
Better reporting.
You know where projects usually fail.
You know what tends to work.
You know what clients are going to need before they ask.
The objective isn't to turn every client into an identical production line.
Some customisation will always be necessary.
But there's a huge difference between useful customisation and reinventing your entire business for every new client.
Better Client Selection Can Improve Retention
We often think about client acquisition and client retention as two completely separate things.
I don't think they are.
Retention starts with who you sell to.
A client can be a bad fit even if they're willing to pay you.
Their problem might not be important enough.
Their expectations might be wrong.
They might not value the way you work.
They may require something outside your real expertise.
You can spend enormous amounts of energy trying to retain someone who was never the right client in the first place.
Better-fit clients are different.
You understand them.
They have a problem you genuinely solve.
They value the outcome.
Your delivery process suits them.
And you have experience dealing with the kinds of challenges they're likely to encounter.
That's a much stronger starting point for a long-term relationship.
Show Clients the Value You're Creating
Winning the right client isn't enough.
You also have to keep demonstrating value.
This is something I think many businesses underestimate.
You're inside your business every day.
You know everything that's happening.
The client doesn't.
They don't see all the work.
They don't know what you've fixed behind the scenes.
They don't always know how much progress has been made.
So show them.
Reporting shouldn't simply say:
Here are the things we did this week.
Connect activity back to the outcome.
What has changed?
What has improved?
What have we learned?
What are we moving toward?
What remains unresolved?
If the final outcome takes time, show progress toward it.
Clients need to understand that you're an asset to the business.
Don't assume they'll automatically see it.
Don't Wait Until the Final Week to Discuss Renewal
This connects directly to retention.
Suppose you're working on a three-month engagement.
Don't get to the final week and suddenly say:
Shall we continue?
That's too late.
If you've been showing the client progress throughout the engagement, you should already have a strong picture of:
where they started
what has changed
what has been achieved
what still needs to happen
what the next phase could look like
Have that conversation early.
Maybe another three months makes sense.
Maybe six.
Maybe twelve.
Maybe the work is finished.
The point is to be proactive rather than waiting for the buyer to make the decision in isolation.
Earn the Right to Sell More
Once you're delivering results, there may also be opportunities to do more.
Existing clients already know you.
They trust you.
You understand their business.
You know their problems.
That can create a natural path to solving the next problem.
But I think there's an important rule here:
Deliver the first thing properly before trying to sell the second.
Earn the right.
Then look at the client's journey.
What problem is likely to appear next?
What additional capability would increase the result?
What would make the original solution work even better?
That is where an additional service can make sense.
Not because you want to increase the invoice.
Because the next piece of work logically supports the client's desired outcome.
Revenue Alone Doesn't Tell You Whether This Is Working
There's one other number I would pay close attention to.
Margin.
It's very easy to become excited by revenue.
£50,000 a month.
£100,000 a month.
Whatever the number might be.
But if delivery is chaotic, staffing costs are exploding and every new client requires a completely different service, what have you really built?
Focus should improve the economics of the business too.
Look at:
margin
average client value
retention
close rate
delivery capacity
time to value
expansion revenue
operational complexity
The goal is not simply to make the business bigger.
It's to make it better.
Does This Mean Everyone Should Pick a Tiny Niche?
No.
I wouldn't specialise blindly.
Particularly when you're early.
You may still be learning where you're strongest.
You may discover that the same problem appears across several industries.
There may not be enough buyers in the market you're considering.
Or perhaps your value genuinely comes from broad strategic experience.
This is why I prefer testing.
Speak to the market.
Run campaigns.
Have conversations.
Look at which buyers respond.
Look at which opportunities progress.
Look at where you create the greatest results.
Then focus.
Business737's existing guide on how to choose a profitable B2B niche goes deeper into evaluating and testing a niche before committing to one.
You don't need to wake up tomorrow and reject 90% of the market.
But you do need to start recognising where your business works best.
Stop Trying to Serve Everyone
This is the lesson I've slowly come to.
Trying to serve everyone can feel safe because you're leaving every door open.
But all those open doors create complexity.
Your positioning gets diluted.
Your marketing becomes less relevant.
Your sales process gets broader.
Your delivery becomes harder.
And the market never quite knows what you're best at.
Focus has the opposite effect.
You choose the right clients.
You learn more about their world.
You solve their problems better.
Your proof gets stronger.
Your conversations improve.
Delivery gets easier.
Clients stay longer.
And the next buyer sees even more evidence that you're the right fit.
That's the compounding effect.
You don't need everyone.
You need enough of the right buyers.
Find the clients where you create the greatest value.
Understand their important problems.
Get extremely good at solving them.
And give the market something clear to remember you for.
Is Your Business Trying to Be Too Many Things?
If you're struggling to explain what you do, attract the right B2B clients or turn opportunities into consistent revenue, greater commercial focus may be part of the answer.
I work with B2B founders, CEOs and directors to clarify who they should be targeting, improve their sales conversations and build a clearer route from opportunity to signed business.
