The Importance of Specificity

The world is full of people; it's full of businesses, too. It's full of web designers and communications consultants. It's full of attorneys, spas, kitchenware stores, and landscapers.

Don't just be another business in the vast sea of businesses; don't make just another product in the wide world of stuff. Be specific about who you are, what you do, what you make, and how you do it. Consumers have a lot of choices: give them specific information about who you are and allow them to make an informed decision based on their needs.

I wanted to buy a bottle of white wine the other day and didn't recognize any of my choices, so I started reading labels. I read a lot about the winemakers, about the wineries, and even some drivel comparing a Riesling to a romantic evening. But there was nothing on any of the labels that actually described the wine. Was that Riesling dry, off-dry, or downright sweet? How was I to know?

Most consumers know what they want: it's our job to tell them what we provide. What harm would it have done the maker of the Riesling to tell us whether it was sweet or dry? If I'd been making Thai food, I would have been pleased to pick up a sweet wine and know with certainty that it would pair with my meal. If I'd been making pork cutlets with sauerkraut, I would have been happy with a dry wine. But instead of being allowed to make an informed decision, I had to leave it to chance whether the wine would pair with the food.

There's nothing wrong with trying to appeal to a large audience, but you can't appeal to everyone. Wines are sweet or dry, or somewhere in between, but they can't be both. Trying to be everything to everyone is what I call Generic Grasping. It might work with big business--they have enough potential customers that it doesn't matter--but for small businesses, it's flat-out dumb.

By telling customers about your services or your product, by removing the guesswork from their decisions, you greatly decrease the potential for dissatisfied customers. The maker of that Riesling left open a 50% chance that I would be unhappy with the product. If they'd given me more information about what I was buying, that percentage would be greatly reduced and would have been based solely on the quality of the product.

How can we use specific language and descriptions to allow your potential customers to make an informed decision? What other examples of Generic Grasping can you think of, and how could the businesses involved change their approach to provide the customer with better information?