Wrong. Let me explain.
It’s a central tenet of marketing that when things are going well, you do more of it. FMCG marketers know this intrinsically. They have to, because the low margins and high volumes required mean anything that upsets the delicate balance is catastrophic. They know that when a product shows signs of taking off, that’s when to pour in the resources and actively market it. They wouldn’t dream of using marketing to prop up a flailing product (well the smart ones don’t).
So what’s different for high margin, low volume professional services?
If you are someone who read the headline and were kind of like, well yeah, it is a bit like taking the easy way out, then I doubt you are alone. Lawyers, engineers, accountants and others with a technical, dare I say, academic, bent have typically grown up believing that they need to continually improve on their weaknesses. That is what led them to achieving the all-round academic brilliance that got them into their degrees, and powered them through university.
But are you still playing to your weaknesses? Are you actively trying to build a product or service that is struggling, convinced that it’s something that clients are going to love if they just give it a go, and to succeed here would be a triumph of your capacity to overcome adversity? Or have you backed yourself into a corner, so to speak, by becoming an expert in something that is not necessarily what you feel is fundamentally your greatest strength?
It’s difficult for people with this personality profile to simply focus on the end goal of financial profit. After all, professional life is about so much more than that. But could you perhaps do with just a little more concentration on your areas of established success, a little more of playing to your fundamental strengths?
The post Just doing what you’re already good at is the easy way out. Right? appeared first on Beaton.
