It’s great to offer lots of services, to broaden your customer base, but avoid being seen as a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ as it implies you’re not a specialist in your field
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A ‘Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none’ is someone who is good at lots of skills, but doesn’t stand out at any one of them. For many business owners, the concept of being one is appealing. When you provide lots of services, it allows you to take on more jobs and have a bigger potential client base.
In some industries, like handymen, it is great to be a ‘one-stop shop’. But for other businesses there are some disastrous pitfalls of being perceived as such.
Here are the pitfalls:
- When you are seen to be a ‘Jack of all trades’, you are also deemed to be a ‘master of none’
It doesn’t actually matter how good you are at what you do, when you can ‘do everything’ people will make the assumption that you will be competent, but not the best.
- When you do everything, people expect to pay less
Who do you expect to pay more to? A handyman or a plumber? The G.P. or the heart surgeon? Specialists are usually sought after because of their expert skills, and people who want their problems solved are willing to pay the specialist more because of it. As a rule of thumb, people on a tight budget seek out the ‘Jack-of-all-trades’, and affluent people tend to seek out specialists. The risk you take being the former is that you can appear desperate for work, willing to do anything and take on any jobs that come your way.
- It is harder to convey a clear message in your marketing
You want your message to be clear and focused. If a golf shop’s marketing said, ‘We sell golf gear’ it would be too broad and difficult to connect with. A more focused message would be, ‘We sell left-handed golf clubs for people with arthritis.’ An arthritic lefty will connect with that. When you are a generalist, you message is broader and doesn’t have the same impact as a specialist with a niche market.
- It’s harder to identify and target your customers
A beauty salon that does hair, makeup, nails, etc. would say that its target market were ‘women’. That is a broad market, and it’s costly to try to market to all women, whereas a salon that specialises in doing makeup for weddings has a much clearer target market.
It is important to remember, even though there are pitfalls, there is nothing wrong with being a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’.The downfall is when you start to promote yourself as one. Consider doing different marketing campaigns for each service you offer, and print a variety of flyers for those different services. Become a specialist in one particular service as your main way to get new leads, then cross-sell your other services. This will alter how your customers perceive your business…no one wants to have heart surgery from a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ doctor who’s offering a 2 for 1 deal and can fit you in tomorrow, they want the specialist who is fully booked and costs an arm and leg!
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