Ideally, the company will be skilled in all areas with the ability to move smoothly from one thing to another. The more broadly you can call on exceptional talent, the wider a client base you can build, so it is certainly important to be able to have faith in all departments.
However, as good and as versatile as a business might be, there are few businesses that don’t have a particularly strong roster in at least one more specific area. This is the case no matter what business sector you’re in, whatever your profile. Real Madrid may be the champions of Europe, and have superb players in all areas of the field, but their midfield shines that little bit brighter - and although that is a very specific example, it is transferable. When your business is particularly strong in one area, that’s not a sign of uneven quality; it’s an opportunity to harness that core competency.
How do you identify your strongest areas?
If you were to sit back and think about your business, what do you find people most frequently comment on? In terms of recent projects, which ones have you really hit out of the park? If, God forbid, you had to scale your company back to specialise in one area, which would you pick? These are hard questions to answer, and it may be worth consulting a business development agency to run the rule over your company to get the best answer. You’ll generally find, though, that one or two areas attract the most compliments.
What do you do about these areas?
Knowing where your business is strongest does not mean that you should redirect resources there from other departments, but it does mean that you can look for ways to emphasise those strengths. If you have a particularly good research and development team, you can underline that in your marketing: highlighting products you have developed and competing with other innovators for contracts. If you’re especially good at fostering client relationships and problem-solving, then you can sell yourself as a company that’s easy to work with. So many businesses lose time smoothing over issues with partners - gaining a reputation as a company that makes that unnecessary is a golden opportunity.
What does it mean for the other areas of your business?
In identifying strengths in your business, you aren’t necessarily going to be showing up what your weaknesses are by contrast. However, if you do discover that some areas could do with strengthening, then it is worth stopping to ask why your stronger areas are stronger, and if there are lessons you can apply elsewhere. That being said, it is important to give the message throughout your business that the presence of some “star players” doesn’t mean the rest are disposable. A message of “we know how good you are, and your time will come” can be enough to see business-wide efforts to emulate the success of your core teams.