Niching Your Business Success.

The Critical Importance of Customer Focus and Business Performance.

Choosing the wrong niche cuts your chances of business success in half. Choose your niche based on two factors: customer focus and business performance.

You have been thinking a lot lately about starting a home-based business.

But something is really bugging you - though you have been pouring in a lot of thought lately, you wonder how do you start a small home based business with the skills you already have.

1. Let's face it, all you want to do is to find a way to use the skills and expertise you already have and wrap it into a business that you can run from home.
   
   
   
2. In fact, you're not looking to become a millionaire or anything right now, you just need to bring some much needed cash flow into your home.
   
   

More than likely, you are sitting on a skill or knowledge-set that other people would gladly pay for.

It's really about assessing your skills to determine

1. What it is that you already know that will help a niched cluster of people solve some of their most pressing problems.
   
   
   
2. Which niched cluster will deliver double punch: allowing you to deliver your magic with intense customer focus that is followed by an improving business performance
   
   

So, how do you start a small home based business with the skills you already have? You work-a-niche.

Meet Sally. Sally is a great cook.

• Every time people taste her fresh-baked yum yums they can't seem to get enough. They rave about them to everybody they know.
  
  
  
• Sally has a special recipe that she created on a whim, and her yums yums are actually low-in-fat but scrumptious-in-taste.
  
  

Sally also has a great mind for business.

• She recognizes that her chances for business growth are greatly heightened if she searches for a suitable market niche of customers that would help her grow and evolve her business.
  
  
  
• She knew she could increase the likelihood of success by ensuring that customer focus and business performance went hand and hand.
  
  
  
• She also knew that the significance inherent in the relationship between customer focus and business performance,
  
  
  
  The more she could focus her efforts on meeting the needs of one targeted market niche, the better her business would perform.
  
  

Below is the result of the customer focus and business performance analysis she conducted:

First, she brainstormed a list of niches that would go absolutely crazy about her low-fat yum yums.

Niche 1: Mothers of young kids who are searching for a healthy snack alternative for their kids.

• Mothers of young kids rave about her fresh-baked goodies all the time.
  
  
• Their kids have gone crazy about Sally's yum yums.
  
  
  
• Oftentimes they smack their fingers and wish for more.
  
  
  
• Mothers have gone bananas over her goodies too.
  
  
  
• They can give them to their kids without feeling guilty.
  
  

Niche 2: The people who work in the office next door to Sally - they are in dire search of an office-breakfast alternative.

• They have often approached her to offer a breakfast service for their office.
  
  
  
• It seems that so many of them are on the go, and they rarely have time to eat breakfast.
  
  
  
• In fact, they have searched for healthy quick-to-go breakfast alternatives, but they haven't found any as scrumptious as those that Sally prepares.
  
  

Niche 3: Real estate professionals that work close to Sally's new home.

• Sally lives next door to several new home development areas.
  
  
  
• Real estate sales in her community are booming. People are moving people into her new development in droves.
  
  
  
• The real estate professionals in her area are up in a roar about Sally's goodies.
  
  
  
• In fact, they have teased Sally about packaging her goodies in a welcome-to-your-new-home basket that they could purchase from her and present to all of her new neighbors.
  
  

Next, Sally evaluated each niche, using the following five customer focus and business performance criteria:

1. Skill. What is it that she brought to the table, that she could turn into a viable business?
   
   
   
2. Market Need. What niched cluster of people out there could really benefit from the skill she already had?
   
   
   
3. Fit. Which of the alternatives fit better into her life, her passion, and her desire?
   
   
   
4. Cluster Receptivity. Which cluster of people did she feel would be most receptive to engaging in a long-term, continual relationship with her?
   
   
   
5. Current Reality. She needed to take a realistic view of your life and determine what type of business will accurately fit into the context of your life and your current reality.
   
   

Reflecting on her customer focus and business performance goal, she whittled her list down by focusing on which niche gave her business the greatest chance of survival.

After careful consideration, Sally decided to target her business efforts on serving the needs of Niche 2:

• Office people that are in dire need of a healthy but scrumptious breakfast alternative.
  

Here are the factors that influenced her customer focus and business performance assessment:

• Sally is a mom of elementary aged children who require her to rise early and get them out of the house.
  
  
  
• Sally's yum yums were best when they were fresh out of the oven.
  
  
  
  
  • Sally fell in love with the idea that she could bake her fresh goodies every morning before her children arose, and
    
    
    
  • deliver them to the office after she had dropped off the kids.
    
    
  
  
  
• Sally also enjoys the camaraderie and the creativity embodied by the office and it's staff.
  
  
  
  
  • The office has a small, lovable staff who gives Sally plenty to think about in terms of new product ideas and business expansion possibilities.
    
    
    

  • They were always giving her quirky and creative new product ideas ,and
    
    
    
  • They were always introducing her to other people in other offices that would benefit from her breakfast-service.
    
    
    
  • They were also giving her increased business by spreading the news of her goodies to many of their friends and family.
    
    
    
  • In fact, many of office staff members had already began approaching Sally about the possibility of purchasing some of her baked yums-yums for their own personal use for their home.
    
    
  
  
  
• Sally also needed to base her decision on which niche would provide her with the greatest chance of having a continual income stream.
  
  
  
  
  • Sally was really worried about having to drum up new business month after month.
    
    
    
  • For Sally, the continual income stream factor was the most crucial customer focus and business performance factor.
    
    
  
  

Sally's customer focus and business performance was so successful, that she has just sealed a deal with the company's leadership.

• She will able to earn cash by providing them with her healthy-n-scrumptious yum yums via her breakfast service,
  
  
  
• She has negotiated a deal that pays her a monthly catering fee to serve as their lunch caterer.
  
  
• She will also be their first vendor of choice in providing a goodie-gift basket to the hundreds of clients that visit the company on-site each month.
  

Sally is now bringing in the extra income she needed (in fact, she bringing in more than she ever expected).

She realizes that her answer to how do I start a small home business really came down to targeting her business efforts to serve that niched cluster of customers

• who would allow her to deliver her special brand of magic,
  
  
• with intense customer focus,
  
  
• and move her towards her need for business performance and growth.
  

Learn from Sally's experience.

Think about your business from a customer focus and business performance perspective:

1. Brainstorm at least 3-5 suitable market niches for your small home based business
   
   
   
2. Then evaluate each cluster niche on its potential for growth and fit.
   
   
   
3. Then choose that niched market cluster that directly matches your income stream needs and long-term growth strategy.
   

Wishing you much success with your business venture!

Signed: Latarsha Lytle, MBA, your small business strategy advisor and motivational coach.

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