“Who is your ideal client?”
If you’re a service provider or own a small business, the answer to this simple five word question reveals a lot.
Whether efforts to grow have direction or are scattered and spread too thin is a dead giveaway about how those efforts are proceeding.
It’s a question I pose early with anyone who feels they’re losing the competition for market share.
Some answer quickly, with confidence. “Small to mid-size businesses.” “Executives in transition.” “Anyone who needs good legal counsel.”
Others seem puzzled by the question. They pause, shift a little, and then say something like “Honestly? The next person who calls me.”
Both answers are indicative of challenging times ahead. Both signal what is preventing progress, slowing growth and contributing to a mounting angst about the future. And that angst has a name.
I call it the fog.
What the Fog Feels Like
The tricky thing is, the fog isn’t obvious when you’re in it. It doesn’t announce itself. It comes disguised as flexibility. As hustle. As the admirable instinct to help whoever shows up with a real problem. Or as precedent — “this is the way we’ve always done it.”
If this sounds familiar, things are likely complicated by the fact that you’re using all the right tactics.
You go to the networking events. You maintain the LinkedIn presence. You ask for referrals and follow up on any that come in. You go to the business development meetings, write the articles, and are open to any opportunity to speak.
Yet something isn’t right. The pipeline is unpredictable. The people you end up working with aren’t always the clients you’d choose.
Your business development activity feels like a second job that you don’t one-hundred percent believe in. And one you sure didn’t sign up for.
That friction between doing the work and finding the work? That’s the fog doing what fog does. Slowing progress. Making it difficult to see or prepare for what’s ahead. And these days preparing for the future feels more critical than ever.
Why Smart Qualified People Stay in the Fog
After thirty years Ive learned it is not very helpful when someone like me comes along suggesting your practice might benefit from “strategic direction.” Suggesting that this will dissipate the fog.
Professionals want to deliver their service. This translates to getting the training, doing all the requisite prep work and setting up shop. And waiting for the market to beat a path to your door. Or hoping to wind up in the right place at the right time in order to encounter the right prospect.
Smart, highly trained professionals have little-to-no interest in a whole new bundle of work related to finding and engaging the clients they want to serve. This work bears no resemblance to the work they are intent on providing.
So when a strategy (or a consultant) suggests a focus that narrows the prospect pool it feels like we’re suggesting potential opportunities be left on the table.
I remember the quizzical look on the face of a lawyer when I suggested the real test of a solid plan for growing a practice is how often you say no to an opportunity. He argued this would be professionally irresponsible. New clients don’t grow on trees!
Dealing with the fog feels preferable to becoming specific about who you choose to serve.
Then there’s this sinister subtlety.
In most professional cultures, a broad client base reads as versatility. Serving “a wide range of clients across industries” sounds impressive. By contrast, focusing specifically on “founders of family-owned manufacturing companies navigating their first succession” can feel limiting.
The truth is, the focus in the second answer is the kind of clarity that drives referrals, premium pricing, and a full portfolio of the kind of work that energizes you.
Versatility is a disguise. The generalist in any arena is increasingly the minder of a commodity.
The Cost That Doesn’t Show Up On A Spreadsheet
The financial cost of the fog is exorbitant. Scattered marketing dollars. Hours pursuing work that never converts. Proposals written for prospects who were never quite right. We can put a dollar figure on these.
But there is a deeper and more damaging cost.
It’s the mental energy spent wondering whether you’re doing the right things. The background anxiety about where the next engagement will come from. The kind of cognitive dissonance that comes with accepting work you know isn’t the best use of your time, because turning down any revenue feels dangerous.
That anxiety doesn’t stay in a spreadsheet cell labeled “business development.” The client who deserves your perception, the problem that calls for creativity, the issues that need your judgment, all of these carry a hefty price.
The fog doesn’t just cost you new business. It infringes on the quality of the work you’re already doing. Even the quality of your life.
The Question That Starts To Cut Through The Fog
The fog begins to clear the moment you stop asking “who can I serve?” and start asking “who should I serve?”
Those two questions sound similar. They’re not.
“Who can I serve?” is open-ended by design. It admits everyone. Anyone. It’s generous, and in a different context, it can be noble. But as a practice development strategy, it sends you everywhere and lands you nowhere.
“Who should I serve?” is a strategic question. It asks you to think about alignment between your deepest expertise and a specific person’s most pressing problem. It asks you to consider where you do your best work, and for whom. It asks that you make a choice.
That choice is not a limitation. It is the gateway to a practice that grows with purpose rather than by accident.
In the work I do with professional service providers (and in a new book I have coming) real progress begins here. Not with a tactic or a template, but with permission to stop trying to be relevant to everyone, and start becoming indispensable to someone specific.
The angst you feel about the future has a name. And now that you’ve named it, you can begin to find your way out.
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If this is landing for you, I invite you to add your name to a Waitlist of folks who have asked me to notify them about the availability of my forthcoming book,Built to Serve: The Business Development Method for Professionals Who Hate Selling. No commitment — just a note when it’s published. And if you join the Waitlist I’ll shoot you a PDF of the Introduction. Just click here.