The marketplace will pay a premium for specialists.  A specialist lawyer, who is an expert in medical negligence, may be the wrong person to deal with the sale of your home, but she’s exactly who you need, to get that medical negligence issue successfully resolved.

The value of specialists

Successful business owners and consultants in every niche, have figured out that if they become specialist in a key area, they can work with great clients and earn attractive fees.  Specialists have this additional value, because unlike generalists in their niche, they focus on being truly outstanding in one or two areas.  So, if we need expert help with a specific issue, we hire a specialist rather than a generalist.

Struggling business owners and consultants also know it’s important to specialise.  However, they get it all wrong.  Rather than focus on the areas where they have expert knowledge, they claim to be specialists in everything (see photo.)  In an effort to appeal to everyone, they use a message that fails to be directly relevant to anyone.  This is a big mistake.

I took the photo for today’s post on a visit to my local town.  The sign belongs to a small, generalist law firm.  However, their sign claims that they are specialists.  Not only that, they claim to specialise in everything!  This is, of course, factually incorrect.  Law is a massive, complex subject with specialisations within specialisations within specialisations.  To claim that they are specialists in all areas of law is ridiculous.  It also hurts their marketing.

Specialist marketing

From a marketing perspective, signs like that are pointless.  They make it impossible for people to know what the law firm really is good at.  If they listed their two or three main areas of expertise, anyone seeing that sign, with that problem, would stop and take note.  By listing nothing and claiming everything, they are invisible.

Claiming to specialise in everything, simply tells people you specialise in nothing.

Claiming to specialise in one (or a few) complimentary areas, is vastly more effective.