Should you be doing less in your business?

Should you be doing less in your business?

Want to know what lobsters and burgers have to do with your business?

I know – you get a buzz from new things. New ideas, new gadgets, new offerings, new clients, new tools….the list goes on.

But sometimes, does your business ever feel a little crowded, like there’s too much going on?

A recent visit to a restaurant got me thinking about how we business owners can often be trying to do too much, and be too much, when maybe what we really should be doing is less.

Let me explain.

I visited a small chain of restaurants in London, Burger & Lobster. As the name suggests, they focus on serving only 2 things: burgers and lobsters.

Even though I knew this, I couldn’t help but still be a little surprised when we sat down and our waitress explained that they only serve burgers and lobsters. There was no menu – the choice was burger, whole lobster or lobster roll, all served with chips and salad for £20.

No menu. No suggesting that we may want to get some appetisers while we wait. No gentle up-sell of any side orders (“would you like some garlic bread on the side?”, seems to be the norm in most places now).

The only decision we had to make, beyond burger or lobster, was what wine we wanted to drink.

They even only had 2 desserts to choose from!

Okay, you could upgrade your lobster to a larger one if you wanted to, but that was it.

The simplicity of their offering struck me as it’s so unusual, and it was obviously very popular.

It’s about picking what you do well, and sticking to it.

How tempting must it have been for them to add in a vegetarian option or a chicken dish for those who don’t like burgers or lobster? But, by sticking to their guns, and their core offering, it means they attract people who love burgers or lobster. (Actually, mainly lobster as I didn’t see many burgers around!)

Lobster, salad and chips for £20 – easy to understand, you know what you’re going to get and if you don’t like lobster you won’t go there!

How about in your business? How easy is it for your customers to understand what you do and if it’s for them?

How much focus do you put into improving your core offerings versus coming up with new ones?

Take some time to get back in touch with what you do, where you excel, and what you should be focusing on.

Stop doing the things that you’re doing just because you think you should.

Do you see a competitor doing something and immediately think you need to do that too? That’s one of the things I loved about the Burger and Lobster chain (apart from the yummy food!) – they truly stand out from their competitors by not doing what everyone else is doing.

It must have taken some strength of character to stick to their basic offering and resist adding in extra things.

Especially all the cross sells and up sells that we are all so used to getting in restaurants now. (No bread and olives?) By the way, the restaurant was full when we went in at around 2pm.

So think about how you can take the lessons from this and apply to your own business.

What can you simplify and where should you be doing less?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this so please leave me a comment below to let me know.

The following two tabs change content below.

Alison Bradford

Alison Bradford is a business coach who works with smart, ambitious business owners to get clarity about how they can grow their business and increase profit. Sign up here to learn 6 easy ways you can boost profit in your business today.
No Comments

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.