Solution Provider Or Problem Solver?
As sales people, we are supposed to provide solutions to our customers problems. We either lead with Insight, making customers aware of opportunities/problems and incenting them to change; or we find a customer that knows they have a problem and is looking to solve it. At some point, we present the customer a solution to their problem–hopefully they accept ours, implement it, and we’re all happy.
But that doesn’t mean we’re problem solvers! I was suddenly struck by this in reading Tim Ohai’s post, I Can’t Say It Any Plainer: SOLVE the @$%! PROBLEM!
I think we confuse proposing and providing a solution with problem solving. But it’s not really the same thing.
The customer is going through a completely different process in problem solving. They are going through scoping, defining, analyzing, establishing goals for what they are trying to do, aligning everyone involved impacted by the problem, determining requirements, business process analysis, business process re-engineering, prioritizing issues, modeling alternative approaches, assessing alternatives (here’s where we raise our hands and pitch in), assessing risks, developing a business cases, contingency plans, developing implementation plans, assigning resources, aligning everyone in the change process………. It goes on.
A number of things strike me as we look at this.
- We only participate in a very small part of the customer’s problem solving process—they have to go through so much more. Perhaps, so much of what we see as “no decision made,” or painfully long selling/buying process is the result of the inability of the customer to solve their problem.
- The customer buying process is only a small part of their problem solving process. If we focus on aligning with their buying process, we still only working on part of solving their problem.
- The customer is doing this, all while holding down their day jobs. Their primary function is within an operation. Maybe they are engineers, so they design and develop products. They may be manufacturers, so they build things, and so on .
- Finally the customer may not be expert at solving problems–or at least these types of problem. But we are! At least we should be. We help customers solve these types of problems every day–or at least we provide solutions to these types of problems. So we probably have greater familiarity and capability to help the customer in their problem solving process.
We never will be able to participate in the entire customer problem solving process (unless we are in that specific business as consultants or service providers), but we can participate in a much larger part of that process than we currently do—creating and claiming much more value.
We want to align with our customers, we want to collaborate with them, we want to partner with them. What better way than help them in their problem solving process?
We do need to develop new skills to participate and provide leadership in problem solving. We need to understand problem solving. We need to know more about project management. We need to understand change and change management. We need to understand collaboration and how to collaborate effectively.
There is a tremendous gap between what we go through in presenting solutions to our customers, even in providing insight and what our customers go through in solving problems. It seems a terrific opportunity to do more for and with the customer, creating, demonstrating, and claiming value.
OK, maybe misery is too dramatic, but at its core, unless our customers are “miserable” we will never be successful in selling them.
This morning I was having a conversation with a sales person in a healthcare related company. We were discussing his sales strategies, value propositions, and how to get customers to buy. Finally, possibly in frustration, I blurted out, “Your services create value for people in misery. If they aren’t in misery, you’re wasting your time and their time.” In hindsight, I felt a little like Gordon Gecko declaring “Misery is good!”
As crass as it sounds, all of selling is really about addressing and relieving “misery.” If our customers, whoever they are–CEO’s, CIO’s, CFO’s, Engineering, Manufacturing, whatever aren’t in “misery,” we will never convince them to buy.
A lot of my early training in sales taught me to focus on “finding the pain.” It’s a useful metaphor, that’s fallen a little out of disfavor.
I get it, technically, to find the pain, the people we are dealing with have to recognize they are in pain, they have to describe the pain, and they want to get rid of it. Selling 101.
Finding the pain has been displaced by Insight, though in reality Insight is just the other side of the “pain coin.” Insight is really about helping the customer realize they are in pain–though they may not have recognized they have a pain. Insight gives them the tools to recognize the pain, to describe it, and help create the urgency to do something about it.
So whether we are solving problems, giving Insight, presenting solutions–we’re really all about finding the pain or exploiting our customers’ misery.
Presented that way, it sounds awfully callous and manipulative. It may be callous, but as sales people we offer the solution to that pain. Often, it’s hope or a vision—If we do these things we will be able to address these opportunities and grow. If we do this, we will be able to improve our operations and become more efficient. It has to eliminate or reduce their misery or pain. It has to provide relief or a way out.
I think the challenge too many sales people face is they are calling on happy customers and prospects. They aren’t miserable, they have no pain. If we keep asking about the pain or misery, they look at us, eyes crossed, “What are you saying? We’re happy, nothing’s wrong!”
If we are unable to provide the Insight to get them to say, “Things aren’t as good as they should be! We’re in pain, we need to change,” then we waste our time and that of the customers. (OK. we can become pains in the A**, but customers have easy solutions to that.)
So crass as it seems, revel in your customers’ misery and pain. Make sure they understand it, make sure they can describe it, make sure they want to do something about it–urgently. Without this, you have nothing to sell.
Burying Our Heads In The Sand
Everyone acknowledges the world is changing, perhaps faster than many want, but it is changing. Change isn’t the issue, it’s a fact. The issue is, How Do We Respond To/Deal With Change?
There are probably five ways of dealing with change.
Instigators! There are the first movers, the innovators. People who imagine new possibilities, creating great new business models. Those creating previously unimaginable products and services. Those not bound by, “This is the way things have always been done.,” but imagine new possibilities, pursuing them with vigor. If you are one of these (be sure you are and not a wannabe), this post is for you.
Fast Followers! These are those who recognize interesting changes and new ideas. They may not have created them, but the extend them, they complement them, they iterate and improve the ideas. They may leverage, “Second mover advantage.” Their “endorsement” helps to legitimize and accelerate the growth of an idea, a product category, new solutions, new models, new solutions. These are the people who probably are driving the refinement, tuning and perfection of the idea. Fast followers are the builders. This post is for you.
Naysayers! Those who can’t see the value of the idea. New ideas, new models, new approaches to solve a problem are seldom perfect, they need refinement and improvement. But there are those who stand on the sidelines declaring it won’t work, critiquing the imperfections, doing nothing to contribute to the refinement of the idea or business model. This article really isn’t for you. Regardless how vocal you might be, you’re on the sidelines and always will be. You won’t put yourself at risk, trying to improve and refine the idea, you will only criticize it. Over time your criticisms will diminish, you will fade away, people won’t remember. This post isn’t for you.
Resistors! These are the people who are afraid to change, they revel in the way things are currently done, they fight it. They may look like naysayers, but they are a little different. They actively promote and support the status quo. They will change their definition of the world to support their own view of it. If business models and practices change, they will defend theirs. They will redefine things to support their own view of the world.
Resistors aren’t dumb, they’re threatened and the only way they can deal with the threat is to redefine things in the way that don’t threaten them.
Everyone resists for a period of time. It is human nature. The critical issue for Instigators and Fast Followers, is to recognize that resistors are threatened. To help them change, understand that threat, find ways of removing it or bridging it. Sometimes their resistance is important., it helps us rethink and improve what we are doing. Most resistors will change, perhaps not enthusiastically, but pragmatically, driven by survival. Many or us fall into this category. Perhaps everyone has some degree of “resistance.” In some areas we may be instigators or fast followers, in others we may be resist.
If we are instigators or fast followers, it’s important for us to understand the resistors and help them change. It’s important for us to learn from them and to refine what we do to engage them and incorporate them into our visions of the new worlds.
Dinosaurs! Some cling to their resistance forever. Their markets may be plummeting, their relevance may be declining, but they have redefined their business and worlds in way that enables them to declare success, even though, slowly, they are becoming extinct. Like the dinosaurs, this may happen over a long time, but it happens.
Oblivious! These are kind of the opposite of naysayers. They are oblivious to what goes on around them. They may be self absorbed or just plain clueless. This post isn’t for you, but you’re probably not reading this anyway.
So where does this leave us?
Instigators, Fast Followers, Resistors–you are critical in designing, driving, and sustaining change and progress. Each role is important, we can’t ignore the others, we have to leverage each other.
Who Is The Customer?
Some of you are scratching your heads. What’s Dave getting into? Aren’t customers the people that buy our stuff? Aren’t they the prospects we go after to convince to buy our stuff?
It’s actually a tougher question than it appears to be. Answering the question requires deep insight into what it is we do better than anyone else in the world, and who needs what we do. Answering the question also demands that we identify who we shouldn’t be selling to. But clearly identifying the customer is critical in focusing our sales and marketing where we have the greatest insights, where we have the greatest impact, and where we get the greatest return on our investment in time and resources. Doing this focuses us on the customer where we create the greatest value. If we do this well, it produces amazing results. We become sought after by those customers, we become partners to those customers. our sales and marketing become very focused, very efficient and very effective.
So how do we answer the question?
First, we have to be very clear about the problems we solve–not just what problems we solve, but what problems are we the best in the world at solving. We can’t be general, we have to be very specific—We allow people to do this…… Eliminating this problem (or Addressing this opportunity)….Which produce these outcomes…… The process of defining these may be an iterative process. Lean start up concepts like developing the Minimal Viable Product are ways organizations do this. We may have a whole list of problems we solve. We need to prioritize these and we need to know that we do this better than anyone else in the world. We need to be very critical here, not fooling ourselves. We have to be honest about what we are really good at, where do we create the greatest value. In doing this, I always like to look at the contra-position—what problems do we exclude, what problems don’t we solve.
The next step is identifying who has the problems that we are the best in the world at solving. The answer can’t be “everyone.” That’s the answer lazy people will give you. But in reality it is never everyone. There may be certain types of companies—based on size, location, industry, performance, structure, organizational type (e.g. public, private, family owned, not for profit, governmental, etc.). There may be cultural or climate characteristics, attitudinal characteristics, behavioral or others. For example, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP are huge enterprise software companies. They share a lot of similar business demographics, similar performance characteristics, and so forth. Culturally, behaviorally—they are very different. So the “fit” with what we do may be very different.
Defining “who has these problems” goes even further. Some obvious ones might be functions—we solve problems for people in these functions but not in these functions. It goes further, it goes to specific functions or personas. “We solve problems for manufacturing quality engineers in process industries, but noy for manufacturing quality engineers in discrete manufacturing processes.” It goes further, “we solve problems for these personas, in these functions, in these types of companies, in these types of industries, in these circumstances or facing these issues, or wanting to achieve these things.” And we do it for those people better than everyone else!
What we are trying to do is, in essence, define a “box.” We tend to dislike doing this, but in defining who the customer is, we have to create these “boxes.” We may have several “boxes,” we may have different “boxes” for various product lines. We can’t have too many boxes–it’s very difficult to manage all these–they are different, require different skills, capabilities, and so forth.
Defining these “boxes” with precision is critical. It focuses us, these boxes are where we can provide the greatest insight. These boxes are where we create the greatest value–most profitably. It is where we win and where those customers want us to win.
If the “box” is too big, too general, you haven’t done enough work. If there are a lot of competitors in the same box, you haven’t done enough work (there can’t be a whole lot of people who are the best in the world at solving a problem).
We don’t define these boxes blindly. It requires product management, marketing, sales, customer service and others functions within the company to define and align everything around serving those boxes. It requires engaging “customers” in the process. In the process, we’ll find many that fit, probably far more that don’t fit.
The boxes can’t have “fuzzy boundaries.” We have to be very focused. “This customer fits, almost or kind of,” is the kiss of death. It starts defocusing us, we make more and more exceptions, we are no longer the best, we start chasing people who don’t have problems we solve, we fail.
The boxes will change over time–the customers will change (should we change with them, should we incite changes). What we do will change.
Now the tough part. Focus. We market to, sell to, service and support customers in the box. We aren’t distracted by others–even though they have money to spend. It’s not our business or it’s bad business. We are not the best in the world at solving their problems.
So can you define your customer? Are you focusing all your efforts on your customers?
