Are You the Yeti of Your Area of Practice?
In a world brimming with a plethora of product and service offerings, the decision to narrow your focus can be daunting. It might feel like you’re staking your claim as the mythical Yeti in your field, and that can be intimidating. However, what if we told you that embracing this narrow focus could be your ticket to success, recognition, and financial prosperity?
The Power of Premium Positioning
Across various industries, from law to business, we see a pattern emerge. Premium brands and services that narrow their positioning tend to excel. They become the go-to solutions for their respective markets, providing specialized, high-quality offerings. And they do it well. By reducing or eliminating the competition, they dominate their niche and thrive.
Now, let’s apply this concept to the realm of legal services. Here, the key to success isn’t necessarily about being the smartest lawyer in town; it’s about being the most narrowly focused. Imagine a lawyer who specializes in one specific area of practice for a particular industry. This lawyer is perceived as a more valuable resource than a generalist who claims to specialize in everything. The specialist gets the urgent phone calls when the stakes are high, while the generalist might be left to compete in a race to the bottom for the lowest-cost work.
The Compounding Return on Narrow Expertise
There’s a delightful and curious outcome when you choose to narrow your focus: you open the door to significant opportunities. When you commit to a single lane, you’ll experience a high level of competence that generalists can’t match. The compounding return on expertise means you become better and faster at what you do. You start recognizing patterns and making connections that elude generalists. Instead of constantly playing catch-up with various industries and regulations, you’ll make instinctual decisions.
Specialization also shifts the power dynamic in business development. A specialist has more leverage in setting service prices and engagement terms. Instead of chasing opportunities, they select the ones that align with their expertise. Expertise is synonymous with selectiveness, while generalists often pursue every opportunity that comes their way.
Remember, if you want to be seen as an expert, it’s not just about the quality of your work. How you conduct yourself in the business development process matters. Your behavior, including your ability to say no, discuss fees upfront, avoid RFPs, project measured confidence, and refuse unwarranted concessions, signals whether your claim of expertise is genuine.
Making Your Expertise Visible
Becoming an expert is not something you can self-declare, especially in professions like law, where ethics rules govern such claims. Instead, you must stake a claim of expertise through your narrow positioning and let the marketplace decide. To influence your potential clients, you need to make your expertise visible and provide social proof to back your assertions. This can be achieved by producing high-quality thought leadership content.
The Domino Effect
Much like the compounding effect of narrow expertise, the thought leadership content you produce can trigger a domino effect. When you create thought leadership for a niche audience, you crystallize your thinking and refine your arguments. This attracts prospective clients, some of whom will hire you. Through the work you do, you deepen your expertise and can produce even more insightful thought leadership. The dominoes keep falling, reinforcing your position as an expert.
