What your business can learn from Ferrari.

Last week, I waited 45 minutes to see a specialist. He was referred to me by my GP who claimed he was “the best”. I busied myself in his waiting room with my mobile until the battery ran out. I then grabbed a travel magazine which had been thumbed to pieces. I chuckled when it proclaimed Hawaii was going to be 2020’s perfect destination. I was just about to read an old National Geographic when the specialist called me. I hopped up, greeted him, and followed him to his examination room. Numerous medical certificates were hanging slightly askew from the walls. The specialist asked me to lie down on his bed and he took a look at me. After a while he simply said, “you have nothing to worry about”. Just like that we were finished, my prognosis was negative (hooray!) and my entire interaction with him lasted around three minutes.

I had discovered that “the best” was really the best and the $210 I happily paid with my credit card confirmed this. In fact, I would have ran my credit card through his EFTPOS machine until it caught fire to celebrate that I had nothing to worry about.

However, would I wait 45 minutes for a GP and be happy about it? Would I pay a GP $210 for 180 seconds? The answer to both is no. Specialists are sought after, they are rare, but they are, in every sense of the word, “the best” – and the best doesn’t come cheap.

And that’s where the benefit of specialisation comes into play outside of a doctor’s room. In the business world, it’s often hard to find a specialist. A business that specialises in one thing potentially plays a risky game, but just like my specialist doctor, they are sought after and are legendary.

BMW isn’t a specialist company. They offer a range of cars for almost everyone and produce hundreds of thousands a year. Ferrari is the opposite – they are specialists. The Ferrari brand is as unique and rare as it always has been. Ferrari is not made for everyone – only a few. Given the choice, which brand would you choose?

Is there a business like Ferrari that you deal with every day that is so focused on specialisation? Is your own business possibly specialised like Ferrari or are you thinking of becoming more specialised? Based on the Ferrari example, let’s take a look at five core principles you need to ensure complete specialisation in what you do.

1. You need passionate people. From the top to the bottom, people with passion work together to create emotion through unity. Ferrari’s staff most likely do have bad days at the office but the passion for their roles pulls them through it. Passion trumps hard, mind-numbing work every time and that increases specialisation.

2. You need focus and no distractions. Yes, Ferrari do make watches and caps and shoes and heaps of other merchandise, but this is to further the brand’s positioning. As a specialist, Ferrari only manufactures beautiful cars. They do not produce helicopters, airplanes, boats (anymore), or trucks. They have zero distractions, just a missile-like focus in creating the world’s most desirable vehicles and this, in turn, leads further to grow their specialist position.

3. You need specialised services. You don’t just take a Ferrari to the mechanic down the road for an oil change. You don’t drive down to the local tyre shop for a new set of $5,000 tyres. Ferrari mechanics work in workshops so clean that you really can eat food off the floor. The tools they use are so perfect that it’s as if they were handed down to the mechanics by gods. A Ferrari mechanic would rather die than let a car go out that wasn’t 100% perfect – a perfect example of specialisation to the max.

4. You need to offer exclusivity. Some Ferrari models are only sold to certain exclusive people – people that Ferrari choose to own and drive their cars. What other businesses do this sort of thing? It’s so illogical. Sure, Ferrari has been like this since the beginning and they have years of experience at it, but which businesses do you know that could be the “Ferrari” of your world? Is your business exclusive enough to be one of them?

5. You need to offer value. The value Ferrari offers is to be forever specialised, forever glorious, forever valuable. As a Ferrari owner, you are forever part of the passion and drive of the company. You share with every Ferrari owner the knowledge, experience, expertise, and quality that is the brand. You will always have the right tools, the right gear, the right mindset working for you and on your car. What can your business offer to deliver unprecedented value?

I’d be foolish to try and claim that TR Group is New Zealand’s “Ferrari”, but I’d be happy to say we are always striving to be the world’s best at what we do. We only specialise in heavy commercial vehicles. We are focused with no distractions. We offer a specialised service. Our services and products are exclusive. The value we deliver goes further than numbers. We are, first and foremost, passionate and experienced truck people before anything else.

Our clients benefit from our specialisation because they get to focus on their core business and are unbothered by any of their fleet’s requirements. It’s working well for them so maybe it’s time you tried it yourself?