Ted Williams on Marketing Focus

One of Ted Williams’ principles of hitting was that an average hitter swinging at a good pitch to hit is better than a great hitter swinging at a bad pitch to hit.

– Reggie Jackson in Sixty Feet, Six Inches, by Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson (2009)

One of my former clients had an above-average sales staff who were prone to chasing after clients who weren’t a proper fit. The mis-fits would be harder to sell to, and harder to make a profit from if they did make the sale. My client’s CEO wasn’t a baseball fan, so he used a different analogy: “Our target clients are horses. We have to quit chasing zebras.”