Building for Everyone? Here’s Why Less is More: Part 2

In Part 1, we discussed how trying to please every market segment leads to product bloat and confusion. Now, let’s talk about how targeting multiple industries and unclear user personas create even bigger headaches.

The Industry Buffet: Why Targeting Multiple Industries Can Backfire

Now, let’s talk about targeting industries. Many companies think the more industries they target—like healthcare, finance, retail, and tech—the better their chances for growth. But this is like piling your plate with incompatible dishes at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It’s a mess.

Here’s why spreading across multiple industries often causes more harm than good:

1. Regulatory Nightmares: Each industry comes with its own regulations. Juggling healthcare’s HIPAA, finance’s GDPR, and retail’s compliance? Good luck keeping up.

2. Domain Expertise Gaps: You can’t be an expert in everything. Without deep knowledge of each industry, your product won’t truly solve anyone’s problems.

3. Fragmented Product Roadmap: Different industries need different features. Trying to cater to them all leads to a scattered product roadmap, where no single feature set is fully optimized for any particular industry.

4. Sales Chaos: Selling to a hospital is not the same as selling to a retail chain. Your sales team will be stretched thin, forced to master complex sales cycles for diverse industries. The result? Confusion and inconsistent messaging.

5. Support Overload: Offering quality support across industries is an enormous task. Your customer support team will struggle to provide industry-specific help, leading to slower response times and customer dissatisfaction.

   
   

The Persona Problem: Who Are You Really Building For?

Then there’s the issue of user personas. When you ask, “Who is this product for?” the answers can be all over the place: “credit analysts, sales teams, underwriters, end customers,” you’ve got a problem.

Here’s why this lack of clarity causes trouble:

1. User Experience Nightmares: Designing a seamless experience for such diverse user groups is nearly impossible. What works for a sales team might confuse an underwriter. The result? A clunky, unfocused product that satisfies no one.

2. Feature Overload: With too many personas to serve, every user group demands its own set of features. Prioritizing becomes chaotic, and soon, your product is overloaded with conflicting functionality, diluting its core value.

3. Training Challenges: Onboarding users from multiple backgrounds means creating different training materials for each persona. This complicates the process and increases the likelihood that users won’t fully adopt the product.

4. Unclear Success Metrics: If you’re targeting too many personas, it becomes difficult to track what success looks like. Are you measuring value for credit analysts, or is it for the sales teams? A scattered user base leads to unclear metrics, making it hard to judge progress or ROI.

   
   

In Part 3, we’ll explore how challenges like juggling multiple POCs and falling for the "innovation" buzzword trap are even bigger obstacles than they seem—and why they happen in the first place.

Acknowledgment: A special thanks to Ankita for her insightful review and thoughtful proofreading of this article.

About Author: Asit Sahoo is an experienced product leader with over 10 years in AI and product development, having built $100M+ portfolios and co-founded an e-commerce startup.