The Pro's and Con's of Being a Generalist in Business

You don’t stand out.

Let’s face it, there are a million and one SEO agencies out there, all fighting for clients. They're all using the same tactics, whether that's email outreach, LinkedIn, or recording videos to send to prospective clients, however, as a generalist, you’re no different to any of them.

This can make your marketing efforts more difficult in terms of client acquisition, not to mention sales and onboarding.

Much more competition

This one ties in with not standing out and having to fight amongst hundreds, possibly thousands of other agencies (10,000 in the UK alone). Because you’ve gone broad, you’ll be met with a lot more competition.

The learning curves are greater.

When you onboard a client in an industry you’ve never worked in before, you need to spend more time understanding the business, learning the terminology, and the level of competition in that space, as well as figuring out the most effective marketing strategies.

It's difficult to scale and automate.

Quite possibly one of the biggest challenges as a generalist is being able to scale and automate. When you’re running multiple campaigns, across numerous industries, each with its own set of unique requirements it can be very challenging to scale and automate.

This is simply due to the ever-changing needs and conditions within each project.

This becomes especially true if you’re providing numerous service offerings also.

It's harder to get clients.

This touches on something that I’ll cover in just a moment, but when you’re serving anyone and everyone as a generalist, your messaging becomes vague and meaningless. If you’re not speaking directly to a target audience, it’s much more difficult to capture attention and generate interest. This of course makes landing new clients much more challenging.

‍Generalist vs specialist

Process skipping is usually always the result of reactive short-term thinking, often brought upon by demanding clients, inexperienced staff, or poor management.

You might be asked not to track calls, report against earnings, or not bother hosting the sales presentation. This is quite common, especially when dealing with warm leads, where the person may know you or the lead has come from a trusted source.

A few good company examples include:

1. Blink SEO - The Expert eCommerce SEO agency - these guys are a company I have always watched closely, as I love that they have niched down so well.

2. Charle - The Shopify SEO Agency - Known well in the UK space, Charle is a Shopify & Shopify Plus agency that designs and develops strategic e-commerce websites.

Any time you skip or change parts of your process to accommodate unexpected situations or requests, you’re heading for disaster. A few good examples might include:

• Prospects wanting to skip the sales presentation and start work immediately.

• Clients want to create their own content or interfere with the content creation process.

• Clients requesting you use certain software or tools.

• Skipping the prequalification process because you know the person or it’s a warm lead.

• Not reporting against revenue due to a lack of transparency around earnings

Under no circumstances should you change, alter, or skip parts of your processes. Remember, your processes are there to protect you, your staff, and the client.

So be sure to follow them.

Written with James Nathan - Founder of Market Jar, the successful London SEO agency.