Trawler fishing v. fly fishing

I was reading this post from Richard White today, "Know your audience". In it he used an analogy about fishing to illustrate his point that the more you understand your audience the better you are able to attract them. It reminded me of a fishing analogy that I have used when speaking about business networking.

Many people tend to go trawler fishing when they should be fly fishing. In their desire to take every opportunity they widen their net as much as possible saying things like:
"I have no target customer"
"What we do is for everbody"
"We deal with any size of business"
The effect of this is that nobody knows what they are looking for.

Contrast this with the fly fishing approach when the person has honed their offering to a specific problem they solve for their target niche. An example is the person who says "We specialise in helping professional service firms win profitable new business". Immediately they have a point of connection with other people working with professional services firms and a potential new networking relationship.

Good Networking!
Dave Clarke