March 17, 2020

What is your business’ TINA factor?

Sanjeev Govila

CEO, Hum Fauji Initiatives

What is your business’ TINA factor?

Have you ever been able to say that you have no competition in the locality where you conduct your business? Are you not at all scared that one or more of your employees will leave you and set up a business using the contacts made while working with you or pass them on to the next employer? Can you confidently say that your clients will almost never leave you?

Great if you can say yes to even one out of the above three posers honestly and confidently. But would you like to say yes to all three of the above?

Sure, who wouldn’t? If so, creating a TINA factor in the minds of your existing clients and future prospects is a necessity. And what is this TINA factor – it’s just an acronym for ‘There Is No Alternative’!

How do you get that seemingly-unachievable TINA factor into the minds of your clients and prospects? The best way to do that and make your business more robust to withstand the fickle-minded clients is to get into a niche segment of operation.

Choose a niche where you stand out as the go-to financial advisor for a large enough potential clientele, where the word-of-mouth spread velocity is high and which aligns with the business model you follow or can follow.

What are the advantages of a niche business? If handled well, the TINA factor can start taking root in your business; referrals would come in more easily; you would know the mindset of most clients before even the first contact is made; most of the common problems, issues and even solutions would be well known to you; and of course, the three posers of the first paragraph of this article would affect you much less.

How to choose a niche? Depends largely on how much self-introspection, research, and studies do you do to choose and discover the segment? The starting point surely should be that the niche genuinely interests you – please remember that if it goes off well, you’ll be dealing with an increasing number of those kinds of clients.

You have a huge choice – Identifying your favourite type of clients, or leveraging your credentials and areas where you can claim expertise, or leveraging your own past, or leveraging on life stage, culture, hobbies, interests, or maybe even leveraging a financial or life event you have previously experienced. So, niches could be anything which has a good market size, good demand for financial services and much less competition. A niche may even get created with your imagination, provided your business sense and vision can see a profitable opportunity there.

Benefits of operating in a niche? Niche clients can have a positive effect on traditional clients, increase exposure to non-niche clients & other professionals, and you work with those people whom you feel the most comfortable.

Any negatives of operating in a niche? Any slip-ups, negativities or poor performances also spread fast amongst potential and existing clients since there’s a high possibility of their inter-connection through social media and even personal connections.

In a nutshell, a business strategy needs to be thought of where initial years of hard work takes you on a smoother ride in the ensuing years as your business settles down and starts cruising. For this, creating a moat around your practice is a necessity and operating in a niche client segment is one of the prime ways of creating such a moat. Sure it has its negatives, but then whoever said that business is a piece of cake!