Top marketing consultant Jay Abraham makes the distinction that many entrepreneurs suffer from tunnel vision when they should be practising funnel vision.
This is mistake nine in my series of common entrepreneurial mistakes.
What Is Tunnel Vision?
It is very easy to focus so hard on your own trade how you and your competitors act that the standard industry or trade practices become your rule book.
"This is what we do in our industry" replaces "What would happen if we....."
if you suffer from tunnel vision, you start accept these industry norms and accepted practices as the only way to work.
It starts to restrict the way you think and even if you do have a new idea, the danger is you test it against these industry practices and reject it without even giving it a try.
Differentiation is The Key
Success comes from being different from your competitors but that can be hard when you are all playing to the same rule book.
But in most trades there are NO rules, just practices which everyone follows out of choice.
So my question to you is:
"Do you want to be a rule taker, a rule breaker or a rule maker?"
You can take the existing rules and play the game the same way as everybody else.
Or you can challenge these rules and especially those rules that cause inconvenience to customers or create high costs.
You can even try to change the game by introducing innovations so powerful that the industry rules have to be re-written. For example look at the discount airlines in the UK, Europe and the USA.
Corrective Action: Replace Tunnel Vision With Funnel Vision
Start looking at the way other businesses treat you as the customer? Is there anything you could apply to your business?
Can you see ways that they have taken out costs from the operation which didn't benefit you?
Can you see how they have reduced the time it takes to service you?
Can you see how simple changes improve the quality of your experience?
This is what Jay Abraham calls funnel vision. You open yourself up to all the ideas you see around you and ask whether you can adapt them to innovate in your industry in the way that it works and the way it communicates with customers and potential customers.
