Power Washers and Business Growth
Power washers are always amazing to use. A filthy patio floor, outdoor furniture or nasty stains on the side of the house. You can try a scrub brush, special soaps, or some serious elbow grease which often doesn’t work, and is a huge pain in the neck! So pull out the power washer, which takes low pressure water from a garden hose and then uses a narrow, high pressure jet to blast the water out with narrow focus on the grime and dirt you want to eliminate. I remember the first time I used one and it felt like magic. By narrowing the focus of the water, and applying some pressure, the same water coming out of your garden hose can suddenly generate newfound results than just scrubbing harder.
At one point in my career I was having a lot of sales success - continually beating my quota and building long lasting, repeat customers. My territory was pretty large, the entire Midwest, so on one hand it felt like the opportunities were endless. But I also had a sense that if I focused in more on certain markets, that I could build stronger relationships, and drive increased results. So I went to our VP of Sales and told him I wanted him to shrink my sales territory to only focus on Minnesota - reducing my territory from five major markets to only one. He looked at me in total confusion.
For 10+ years he’d dealt with salespeople begging for more leads, access to more accounts, or more marketing support. He’d never had someone come asking to make their sales territory smaller. My theory was that if I was limited to only focus on a single market, I’d spend a lot more time there, build more meaningful relationships, and could uncover more business than if I just stayed at the surface across a larger area.
The False Belief that Bigger is Better
Sales teams and sales people often get stuck in the idea that the bigger their sales territory, the more opportunities that could come their way. And if you’re sitting back waiting for leads to come to you, it’s probably true. But if you want to drive significant results, you have to build your own system to create demand and interest in your company. In some cases this is geography like in my example above. For others it’s focusing on a specific industry, size of company, or profile of business. When you focus in more specifically, you can be more of an expert in that niche, bring more value - and as a result, experience more results.
Narrow Doesn’t Mean No
Where people get caught up in the idea of narrowing their focus is worrying they’ll miss out on opportunities outside of the stated focus. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The idea of defining your focus, doesn’t always have to mean saying no to everything else. When I narrowed my territory to focus on Minneapolis, if a potential customer from Detroit called me about a sales opportunity I was all over it. But when it came to my outward focus, I was zeroed in on Minneapolis.
That narrowed focus allowed me to radically increase engagement with customers and the market. I now only travelled to one place, read the local trades, went to all the local market networking events, and visited any and all companies big or small to widen my network of relationships.
Take a look at your best customers, and where you feel you can make the most impact if you just narrowed your focus. It’s a simple way to take the skills you already have, and apply some pressure to blast away results.