Big Fish, Little Pond

We can’t all be the best. No matter how hard we try, by definition only one of us can be the best in any given endeavour at any one time. So where does that leave the rest of us?  Little fish in a very big pond. We could keep striving and maybe a few of us will make it to the top of the food chain, but that still consigns the rest of us, the middle-of-the-road players, the under-achievers, the not-quite-good-enoughs, to perpetually fighting for food amongst bigger, tougher, meaner, hungrier fish than us.

Or you could change ponds. Find one that’s smaller yet still suits your style and fits in with the business you’re in. In other words, find your niche in a niche market.  Let’s say you sell life insurance. That’s a very big pond and it’s tough to fight your way to the top, but if you specialised in selling life insurance to people who are into extreme sports or third world dictators or property developers, the pond shrinks considerably and you’d have a better shot at becoming the numero uno fish.

Another example, if you’re in real estate, how about specialising in selling purpose-built warehouses for Chinese goods importers, or converted loft spaces for IT geeks?  Get to know as much as you can about the needs of your niche market, for example, IT geeks need to control the lighting so it doesn’t reflect on their screens. They need extra security because they have a lot of expensive equipment lying around and not a lot of muscle to fight off any bad guys who want to take it away from them. They need reliable, heavy duty electrical wiring and their special requirements around telephone hard wiring makes finding the right property challenging.

I had a geek friend who started an internet company back in the early days, before most people knew what the internet was. He was mildly successful and used the proceeds of his success to buy a new house in a desirable inner city area. He intended to use the lower floors of his new house as a base for his business. 

Unfortunately, he found out after he moved in that the phone lines in that area couldn’t cope with the traffic he was generating and it ended up costing him over $100,000 to resolve the problem.  A real estate agent who specialised in finding places for IT geeks would have known about his special requirements for phone access and would have checked it out before he bought the place.

To effectively niche market you need to;

• 1.    Decide which market you’re going to focus on and make sure there’s enough existing and/or potential business to sustain you. 
• 2.    Make sure there’s a future for your niche. No good specialising in selling wooden cart wheels if nobody has any wooden carts.
• 3.    Learn all you can about the special needs of your market.
• 4.    Find out who the big players are and keep tabs on what they’re up to.
• 5.    Study up on your competition and identify their strengths and weaknesses.
• 6.    Regularly read trade magazines and publications that relate to your niche.
• 7.    Get Google Alerts for the main players and for your competition.
• 8.  Always maintain client confidentiality – word spreads like wild-fire in niche markets and if you betray any client’s trust, all your other potential clients will hear about it and you’ll be hunting for another niche to set yourself up in.

Understand that knowledge is what gives you the edge as a specialist in your niche market. Once you set yourself up as a knowledgeable specialist, clients will seek you out because you’re attuned to their needs. They don’t have to waste time filling in the gaps to a salesperson who doesn’t understand their industry when they can come directly to you, the specialist.