Widen Your Niche

As a reseller or integrator, you've built a successful business by establishing some focus or niche where you have domain knowledge and experience. This knowledge hasn't come easily. You and your partners and staff have developed your expertise through hard work and trials. The things you've done - the business problems you've solved, the technologies you've mastered - are what make you so valuable.

In some businesses, that would be enough. You could grow by bringing on more staff and training them in the specifics of what you do. But in our world of constantly changing technology and complex business problems, you can't rest on your laurels. The pace of change and the competitive landscape simply don't allow it.

So growing your business today means either entering entirely new markets or finding opportunities to stretch, to learn new tools, and to offer new solutions and services within your existing markets. Breaking into new markets can be costly in terms of research, training, and competition. A better plan may be to leverage what you currently offer within your established markets and look for extensions within that base. In short, to "widen your niche."

Use Existing Competencies To Build New Solutions
But of all the potential areas for growth, where do you focus your efforts? And how do you find the cycles to acquire these new skills? You and your staff are already consumed with current deliverables and closing new sales.

What's needed is a little examination and planning. You'll need to carve out a couple of hours for yourself. Perhaps over an iced tea on the back deck on a lazy Sunday afternoon, with a fresh pad of legal paper and a couple of sharp pencils. First, make a list of all of the competencies your company offers today and the areas where you have real solutions expertise. Try to be precise: What am I providing today?

Then ask yourself: What are the problem areas at the boundaries of what I'm providing today? What are the natural extensions within the business process? On the technology side, where are the technologies leading? What is the next logical step?

For instance, if you're offering image scanning, have you developed knowledge in OCR/ICR (optical character recognition/intelligent character recognition)? If your strength is image capture, what about archive storage and retrieval? If you've concentrated on paper forms processing, what about semi-structured documents, e-forms, and wireless? If you are capturing name and address data, what about address cleansing? What about integrating imaging with ERP (enterprise resource planning), or getting into workflow solutions?

Don't censor yourself at this point. Let your ideas flow freely. Some of the thoughts you write down may seem wild and crazy - but that's OK. Once the creative juices get flowing, you'll find that you have several ideas that may be natural extensions to your already proven expertise.

Once you have a rough list of creative ideas on paper, it's time to sharpen your pencil. Of all of the new ideas and technologies you've written down, which ones are your vendors currently delivering? Is there a vendor you can partner with to help you as you get down the learning curve? Which ideas have your customers and prospects already been inquiring about? Which most clearly responds to customer issues and provide ROI?

Take some time and rank each of your ideas. Work to determine the top two or three technologies or areas that seem to hold promise.

This narrowed list is your strategic target for growth. The next step is the tactical planning on how you'll get there. This will include working with your vendors, getting training time scheduled, and looking for opportunities within existing customers and new prospects.

Your customers look to you for guidance because they've come to trust your knowledge and experience. You're calling on these customers and prospects already. By broadening your solution offering, you get a bigger piece of the pie and bring more value to your customer. Take some time now to plan how you will "widen your niche" and grow your business for the future.