Specialise your way to the top.

Today I was reading a post from the Brazen Careerist blog by Penelope Trunk. Even though she writes mainly about corporate career issues, Penelope has some very good insights into dealing with people, and the way people interact with each other. Useful stuff for service business operators to know about.

About specialising...
It's often the case that businesses need to specialise in order to be more successful. It's ironic that to get more clients, often you need to focus on a specific target audience. In reality specialisation usually brings in more business - even though you are potentially excluding some clients who are outside of your area of speciality.

Penelope's blog post today mentioned research that showed movie stars actually benefit more from type-casting than they are disadvantaged by it. Why is this so?

Let me put it my way. Basically people want to make safe decisions. The bigger the decision, the 'safer' they want to be. They want to know that the person they are relying on to do a job, can actually do it.

This goes for movie stars as well as for service providers.

In most cases people - and that means your potential clients - want to deal with a specialist.

Movie stars don't rely just on the script. The most successful movie stars are paid well because they can put their own style and 'life' into the role. Nicole Kidman tops the ladies list at the moment earning $21 million per film.

How do you put your own 'life' into your role as a service provider?

Don't rely on your script - your technical process, or your products - to be a success. Inject your own style and let your clients experience your service. Maybe even give them some popcorn while you're at it!