Top Management Story

Writen by Andrew Rowe

Focus your business, focus your marketing. Back in the 80's, Peter Lynch, the once famous fund manager for Fidelity Investments Magellan Fund, wrote a book called "One Up On Wall Street". The book is about how great companies build themselves and how to pick great companies as an investor. One of the chapters in his book is called "Deworsification". Companies that decide that because they're good at one thing, they can do all things well and they get beyond their core competencies.

Question I have is, is your company engaged in deworsification behavior? Companies that stay focused on their core competencies and core markets are the ones that over time have the best chance of winning. First of all, focus all of your internal corporate resources on building a sustainable competitive advantage in your core markets. Some businesses decide to venture into new markets and into new customer bases even though it has a tendency to dilute their efforts and can actually make it harder for them to compete, even in their core markets. We see many different examples where a company has started in one business, they have decided to sell their products into different markets, and not recognizing the expense associated with building brand awareness, building channels and actually driving sales into multiple markets at the same time.

So, if your company has over-extended itself by trying to sell products and services into too many markets at the same time, it's time to rethink that strategy and stop deworsifiying and re-focus your efforts on selling more products and services into your core markets and core customer bases. A better strategy instead of deworsification is to find a way to add more services and more products onto sales into your current markets; that is a much more smart approach from a strategic marketing standpoint.

About Cube Management

Cube Management delivers sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions (whether recruiting, interim management or consulting) that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results. Download the Cube Management Inside Sales Guide and the Cube Management Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide.