{"id":1191,"date":"2018-08-18T03:45:39","date_gmt":"2018-08-18T03:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2018-08-18T03:45:39","modified_gmt":"2018-08-18T03:45:39","slug":"be-disciplined-at-sticking-to-your-core-business-or-diversify-carefully-if-you-feel-you-must","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/rwc-blog\/be-disciplined-at-sticking-to-your-core-business-or-diversify-carefully-if-you-feel-you-must\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Disciplined at Sticking to Your Core Business &#8211; Or Diversify &#8220;Carefully&#8221;, If You Feel You Must"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">While a commendable growth strategy used by many businesses is to diversify their product mix, be careful as to the extent (and speed at which) you diversify. Product diversification typically means adding one or more new product to your existing offer\u2026which typically requires a financial investment (e.g. for research &amp; development, if the product is a new innovation).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><u>Before<\/u> you diversify your product mix, review your Cash Flow Budget to make sure that you can <u>realistically afford<\/u> to proceed with this action. i.e. that your projected bank balance will enable you to make the purchase without having to borrow funds, or forecast cash flow will accommodate loan repayments (including interest) if you need\/ choose to instead borrow the necessary funds to make the purchase.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Also,\u00a0<u>before<\/u> you diversify your product\/ service offering, think carefully about:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">What extra human resources would I need to have in place in support of the new products\/ services under consideration ?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">How would the introduction of the new product(s)\/ service(s) impact on how current customers perceive &#8211; and engage with &#8211; my business ? Do I run the risk of alienating some customers due to their perception that I have changed the main focus of my business ?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">To what extent would new customers be attracted to engage with my business ?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">There is no harm in diversifying your product\/ service offering \u2013 for the additions to then become a part of your \u201cCore Business\u201d, providing that you firstly thoroughly <u>rationalize<\/u> the implications (using prompts\/ questions such as those above) of diversifying <u>before<\/u> you proceed to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Sometimes businesses that have attempted to diversify their product\/ service offer have found that the total number of customers who engaged with their business (or total sales $ achieved) <u>reduced<\/u> soon after making the change; an outcome which caused them to return to only offer what their core value proposition was prior to trialing their diversification strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">A key advantage of \u201csticking to your knitting\u201d (i.e. your core business) is that you increasingly become a specialist at providing the product\/ service that you have chosen to remain focused on, and therefore become well known\/ regarded as such by customers \u2013 which in itself can influence business growth.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While a commendable growth strategy used by many businesses is to diversify their product mix, be careful as to the extent (and speed at which) you diversify. Product diversification typically means adding one or more new product to your existing offer\u2026which typically requires a financial investment (e.g. for research &amp; development, if the product is a new innovation). Before you diversify your product mix, review your Cash Flow Budget to make sure that you can realistically afford to proceed with&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1192,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions\/1192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}