10 Years. 10 Insights. #8
Insight 8: Pick a Lane. Trying to Be Everything to Everyone Is Costing You Growth.
This is the eighth post in a ten-part series marking Inkberry's 10th anniversary. Each post covers an insight drawn from a decade of working with B2B founders and leadership teams on growth strategy.
One of the most common challenges I see with founders and early-stage companies is the fear that by choosing a focus, they're leaving money on the table. If they prioritize certain markets, certain channels, or certain customer segments, what happens to everything else?
The short answer is: everything else gets done better, too.
The Cost of Trying to Do It All
Let's say you have five markets you want to pursue, three salespeople, and a fixed marketing budget. You can spread all of those resources evenly across five markets and move each one forward a little. Or you can concentrate your time, spend, and energy on the one or two markets where you have the best chance of winning, move those forward meaningfully, and build from there.
The math isn't complicated, but taking the risk to prioritize can be hard.
When a company tries to be everything to everyone, a few things happen. Marketing efforts get diluted. Sales conversations take longer because prospects aren't sure what you actually do. Positioning gets so broad that it stops landing. Nobody wants to call a plumber to fix their electrical work. When your message is trying to cover too many solutions for too many audiences, prospects have to work too hard to figure out whether you're the right fit. Many of them won't bother.
The cost of not choosing isn't just inefficiency. It's lost momentum, slower growth, and a team without a clear direction to move in.
Focus Isn't Permanent, It's a Starting Point
One of the things I hear most often from founders who resist picking a lane is the worry that committing to a strategy means they can never change it. That's not how it works.
Choosing a focus gives your team direction and energy. It gives you something to measure against. And when you do want to change course, having a strategy means you can evaluate that decision against your goals and your data, rather than making it based on the last deal you lost or the last conversation you had.
Founders are usually very comfortable with change. A clear strategy doesn't take that away. It just makes the next change a more informed one.
There's also an important distinction between keeping your options open strategically and simply avoiding a hard decision. If you're holding back from committing to a direction because of genuine uncertainty that more research could resolve, that's one thing. If you're holding back because the decision is uncomfortable, that's worth examining honestly.
How to Choose
Start with the opportunity. Do you understand the real size and potential of the markets you're considering? Who else is competing there, and how? What does your total available market actually look like? If you haven't done that analysis, it's worth doing before you place your bets.
Then pair that with an honest look at your internal strengths. Which markets are the best fit for the products you have, the sales team you have, and the budget you have right now?
Once you've made a decision, set your success criteria before you start, not after. Define what progress looks like over a specific timeframe, and commit to evaluating against those metrics rather than reacting to individual wins or losses along the way. One lost deal isn't a reason to abandon a strategy. One great conversation isn't a reason to add three new markets to the list.
You can't do everything at once. But you can do one or two things really well, build on that success, and expand from a position of strength. That's how focus becomes a competitive advantage.
If your team is wrestling with where to focus your go-to-market energy, I'd love to help think it through.