For a service business startup, we as entrepreneurs make this common mistake of approaching our prospects with as many services as possible. We try to represent ourselves as a one-stop solution for all our prospect’s needs. Like a departmental store. You go there you find everything you need.
But we miss the point that a departmental store is not manufacturing any of the products they are selling. They are the ones holding the retail value while different manufacturers hold the quality value of the products. Whereas, a service business startup is providing the services by themselves only.
Even a product based established business, that has a wide range of product line has only a few top-selling products. Not all products they launch become successful. They can absorb these failures but a startup might not.
It is important for a startup or a team of few friends who are willing to startup, is to know their internal strengths, inside out.
A starting up agency having an in-house team is rarely providing quality services in different categories. In the majority of the cases, they are only providing one or two good quality services while other services they are offering are substandard.
Nobody can be a specialist at everything. A startup should find its speciality. A service they can provide with their best capabilities. We as entrepreneurs should forget about the insecurities in sales. In order to acquire sales, we tend to crowd our services with garbages.
Those few clients that we have already acquired with this approach, are going to leave us anyway, sooner or later. They took those services in the first place to save some money. Whenever they will find another cheaper service provider, irrespective of the quality, they will leave immediately.
It is better to find the best possible service that we can offer, and focus on selling that. We should limit our services to the better ones.
I think one cannot survive in business for too long by providing substandard services to paying customers. This way of doing business is like gambling. Every time we will have to dodge this and that to survive. There will not be any progress, there will only be survival.
As entrepreneurs, we should do some introspection. It is a responsibility of an entrepreneur, to be honest towards the customers and the vision.
