In his inaugural address John F. Kennedy famously turned a common question around: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” [Surely good advice today, with both sides of political spectrum explaining what they will do to create jobs and opportunity for waiting citizens, who wonder, not what they should do to create a better nation, but which elected officials will do so for them.] Answering the right question is often critical to success.

It seems logical, after all. “Let me introduce myself,” is a pretty natural way to open a conversation. The majority of company presentation slides start out this way with often one, two, or more slides explaining “who we are.” ‘We’ve got to explain how great our technology or experience is, don’t we? That’s our selling feature!’ Unfortunately, no, it isn’t. Your selling feature is not about what your business can do, but what you business can do for the customer.

I worked with a firm that had an exciting, innovative technology and they are rightfully proud of it. Initialy, the company presentation started out explaining that they were a well-funded organization with patented technology, and then took a few brief moments to explain this innovative technology before showing examples of how it might be used. Sounds reasonable, but the audience never seemed to be listening. And why should they? What’s in it for them?

We turned around their presentation, describing instead typical problems customers might have encountered that the technology could address. Presenters could ask questions about which of these seemed the most appropriate and tailor the rest of the presentation to fit the customer’s specific interests. Armed with this new information, success stories illustrating different applications and results how a customer might save money, or avoid costly maintenance. Suddenly the audience is interested, and they start asking questions about how this technology works. Doesn’t that seem a more logical, to tell them about your products, after they’re convinced that it might do them some good?

Websites often suffer from the same problem. Instead of focusing on how products and solutions might benefit the customer, we have pages describing how our companies and products are different, better than the competition. (Eye On Technology suffers a bit from this, but that’s what this blog is supposed to do–show our benefits.) Customers have little patience to learn about why you’re important when they haven’t figured out why they shouldn’t just click another link. You have very little time to answer this question before they’re gone—don’t waste it.

Ever seen one of those exhibitions at a hip gallery downtown? Maybe it was a photography exhibit and it was a series of pictures of…well, anything. Garbage cans, hubcaps, people with their back to the camera, trees, rocks…it really doesn’t matter. How, you might sometimes think, did a bunch of pictures of rocks make it in to the gallery? I take a lot of pictures as a hobby and I know I can take better pictures than some I’ve seen in galleries, so I certainly wonder this sometimes.

The answer is focus. Not how well the photographer adjusted the focus of the camera of course; the series could have been a several blurry images, after all. Instead it was the artist’s focus on something in particular. No matter how many lovely photos I’ve taken while traveling around the world, all they ever amount to are very fine snapshots and post cards. If you check out my stream of photos, you’ll likely click away, satisfied that you’ve seen some nice images, but remembering little.

For years I’ve had a travel blog too. (That’s the second, and last plug, in case you’re counting.) Really, it’s my own blog and I figured I could write whatever I want there. While I am proud of my loyal fan base of, I don’t know seven readers? it too suffers from lack of focus. (My web stats tell me that many more people get lost there per week, but I am just assuming that only around seven are repeat customers.)

What shall friends, who’ve enjoyed what they’ve read, tell their friends about my blog? Is it really a travel blog, or a tech blog, or ramblings of some guy? How would Google’s ad words target the right content? How will people describe your business? Starting here, this new blog at Eye On Technology brings some focus to my other blogs topics, but more importantly, seeks to become a resource for our customers at the same time.

Companies founded on technology are often struggling to find a home for their amazing work. They take just about everything that looks like an application, hoping that one of them will hit. Small firms have little choice, but focus can at least enable them to make the best of the applications they already have.

Focus is a what turns pictures of a bunch of rocks into art. Focus is what turns a blog about cooking recipes into a book and a movie. Focus is what can change your business from a struggling garage shop into a successful venture.

Meanwhile, here, we’ll try to focus on technology topics, and ideas that might help your business. Please help our team out with your comments now and then.