Growin' like a 'shroom

Has your company grown like a mushroom?

You know...perhaps it has grown through referrals and you might have been tied up in all the responsibilities and tasks of running the business.  By being so customer service focused, it's easy then to get caught up with adding numerous features to your offering in an attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audience.  Give the customers what they want, right?

John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing fame, calls that "featuritis" or "feature-creep".  It's when so many features of your service are added that the offering isn't perceived as doing any one thing particularly well.  The problem then is that your customers won't consider you to be offering anything different from the next guy.

What would happen if you defined your offering as you do your company and stuck to your guns in terms of what the offer was?  That is, choose two or three things your company or product delivered and you communicated those things over and over again.  My guess is that your target market would soon get the point and the value would go up.
If you've been "growin' like a 'shroom" then you might have experience a case of featuritis.  And that's no fun.  My recommendation is to get back to the basics...redefine who you are, you offering, and stick to your guns when communicating to prospect and customers.

Comments

[Tanner Christensen]

Great advice Scott. It seems that a lot of businesses want to do everything these days, and it's devaluing their services. Redefining one's self, or one's business, should be something that becomes a tradition.

[Jeffrey]

Scott,

Featureitis definitely plagues business around the US. I think what is important to note is that whatever your go-to-market product is, it better be your primary product. Although company's products and business models can change, depending on market conditions, in many cases, your first popular product will define who your business is in the mind of consumers. So before you start throwing random products out on the market, think it through. More tips here, a great resource: www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2