One of the objections I often hear about niching is something along the lines of, “Won’t my clients be nervous about me working with the competition?”
David C. Baker said it best when he said something along the lines of, ‘Your clients fear being incompetent more than they fear you working with the competition.’
Your job as a marketing consultant is to help companies be more of themselves and to amplify those differences in the market.
Usually, there is more than enough business to go around for everyone. Shouldn’t they be happy if you succeed in making them the top two companies in their field?
As long as you don’t work with highly overlapped companies at the same time, and you don’t steal their IP or share anything that isn’t publicly available with any of your clients, you’re usually fine.
Your clients aren’t paying you for your exclusivity. They’re paying you for your expertise.
More times than not, your clients will be happy you understand their industry enough to actually help them.