Someone more famous than me coined this phrase. On the surface it sounds insane…why would anyone want more customer problems? Let me be clear, I am not referring to the type of customer problems associated with shoddy products or service from your own company. I am referring to problems (needs and wants) that the customers in the marketplace have that are unresolved, or are in need of a better solution. These are business opportunities disguised as “problems”.
Let me put it another way…”No problem = no sale”. One of the most frequent mistakes marketers make is to forget that customers buy solutions to their problems, not the products or services per se. The product or service is simply the means to exchange money between the business and the customer. The customer is willing to pay $X to make their problem go away. They trust that your product will do that.
Virtually every sale has, at its core, a problem that the buyer is attempting to eliminate or reduce. Sometimes the problem is very acute and well understood by the buyer, causing a gap to exist between their current state and what they consider to be their desired state. This creates some level of anxiety. People don’t buy cell phones to have a beautiful piece of technology with games and cameras built-in. They are buying a solution to the problem of being able to communicate conveniently wherever they are. In the old days it was a payphone or an answering machine on your home phone. Same problem but an inferior solution. The cell phone was a vastly superior solution to most people, especially highly mobile professionals. As the product category evolved, different variations appeared that solved an ever-widening variety of “problems” – “where am I?” (GPS), “I’m bored” (games and music), “I want to look cool” (more stylish phones, fashion accessory, etc). Cell phones will be eclipsed some day by an even superior solution. You can count on it.
Other problems are of the type where the buyer is not aware of the “gap” until much later. I personally was a late adopter of cell phone technology. I simply did not want to be “available” all the time whenever anyone wanted to reach me. Being unavailable most of the time was not a problem that I felt I had, so I waited until much later to get a cell phone. The “problem” I was looking to solve at that time was merely a means for my children to reach me in an emergency. Of course now I wonder how I ever got along without the thing.
Not to put too fine of a point on this but most marketers and sales people continue to over-stress product-oriented messages (our widget has more features than their widget). A much more effective strategy is to address the customer problem that needs fixing, and then reveal your solution’s benefit to resolving that problem. This is at the heart of good marketing and sales strategy.
In conclusion, always clarify the customer problem you are solving with your product offering, on the customers’ own terms and in their own words. This is 80% of the battle. The remaining 20% is all about getting the customer to choose YOUR solution over their alternatives. Become an expert at getting your customers to willingly give you their money to solve their problems.