MARRY THE PROBLEM -- NOT THE SOLUTION
Imagine
that you haven't been feeling well for a while and you've tried a number of
different things, but nothing's worked. Finally you say, you know what, I'm
going to have to go to the doctor, so you pick up the phone and schedule an
appointment. Sure enough, during the time you're waiting for your scheduled
appointment, your problem gets worse. By the time you actually get to the doctor's
office, the problem still has not subsided, so thank goodness you scheduled
that doctor's appointment. Upon your arrival at the doctor’s office, you sign
in and they tell you it's going to be a few minutes before the doctor can see
you. When the assistant calls you in, she takes your weight and your vitals, asks
you what's going on and so forth. This all seems kind of normal, right? Now I
want you to imagine that the doctor walks in and says, “here's your
prescription. You can go”.
You ask, “what do you mean here's my prescription - I can go? You didn't ask me
about my symptoms. You didn't ask me what brought me in today. You didn't ask
me why I thought it was significant. I actually took the time out of my day to
come see you. How do I even know that whatever information you have is actually
correct? How do I know that what I have confirms the prescription you wrote me
is exactly what I need?” Then the doctor says, “you know what? I see people
like you all the time. I know what your problem is and we can just short
circuit all of that and I'm just going to give you a prescription. As a matter
of fact, truth be told, I probably could have had the people at the front
office give it to you”. Then you say, “Hold
on. How are you going to give a prescription without a diagnostic? Maybe I self-diagnosed, and maybe I knew I
needed a prescription, but I went through all this effort to come in, so at
least do me the courtesy of performing a routine diagnostic”.
Now
that scenario seems reasonably absurd, doesn't it? Until you think about it. It's
exactly what a lot of small business owners and sales people do on a regular
basis. We go into customers’ offices and we start off giving them the
prescription without having done the diagnosis. Let me tell you how bad that
is.
Imagine if the doctor says to you, “not only am I giving you the prescription,
but this is the best prescription that you can imagine, that you can ever hope
to have. This prescription has been researched. This medicine is made by the
best company in the world. Their manufacturing processes are very strict, and
the repeatability and consistency in their products are just amazing. As a
matter of fact, everybody that's had this prescription has just talked about
how wonderful and how amazing it is.” Keep in mind, he is telling you all the
benefits of the prescription without diagnosing your problem.
As a supplier, think about this for a second. A lot of times you launch into
your solution - how wonderful it is, how great it's been for everybody else
under the sun - without first confirming the customer’s problem. More often
than not, you get so consumed, so excited about the solution you have put
together that you forget to do the diagnosis of the problem you’re trying to
solve. You spent a lot of time and effort putting the solution together; it
took a lot of resources; it took a lot of brain power to come up with the right
components. You're promoting that solution fervently, because you know the
benefit that that solution is going to create. You’re married to the solution –
rather than being married to the problem.
Here is a perfect example. For those of you that recall, there was a device out called an iPod made by Apple, and Apple said they created a device that could hold your music. Similarly, now, think about this for a second, because once you get into it, you realize that Microsoft had gotten into computers and had the DOS and windows operating systems. Microsoft emphasized that you could have this big mass storage device called a hard drive, and with that hard drive you could do amazing things. It was like there was no end to what you could put on a hard drive: you could put spreadsheets, you could put Word documents, you could put graphics like Harvard Graphics or PowerPoint. You could download files. You could do just amazing things with a hard drive. I mean, it was just a fantastic solution, and they just thought of all the different applications that you could use with that solution.
Now,
Steve jobs with Apple comes along and he says, you know what, a hard drive is
great, but people have to do too much work to figure out what the heck to do
with a hard drive. So, Apple came out with the iPod. What is the genius behind
an iPod? It was a single purpose hard drive - a single purpose mass storage
device that was the exact same hard drive that you found in a PC - except it
only had one job: store and play music. So if your problems were: you could not
carry your music collection with you; you were tired of keeping up with audio
cassettes in your car; you had long since gotten past the bulky eight tracks, then
the whole notion of having an iPod was huge because now you could get hundreds
of different songs - taken from different CDs. You could get a hundred
different CDs, or 300 CDs on one single device. You could carry it with you in
the car, on the airplane, at work, in your pocket.
The initial problem was the portability of the music. You can't listen to your
music when you're jogging? We’ve got a device for you. You can't take your
music on the airplane with you? We’ve got a solution for you. When you're
driving, you don't have the full range of all your music you want to listen to?
We’ve got a solution for you. You have terrible radio stations in your
community? We've got a solution for you. We could just go on and on with this,
but you’re beginning to see that when you start marrying the problem, you start
coming up with really creative ways to help people get to your solution. So as
you start thinking through what's the real value of your business - and how you
want to engage with your customers and your clients - stop thinking as though
you're the doctor, rather look at it as if you're the patient.
If you're the patient and a doctor is trying to help you get to the right
prescription, then you want to make sure that the diagnosis is good. You're now
in the position of actually having to ask the right questions, get the right
diagnosis, and really and truly understand the problem. You're going to have
every opportunity to walk through your solution, but you want to understand the
problem first - just like Apple did and just like you would want as a patient. Your
customers want to know that somebody understands their pain - the problems that
they have.
Therefore,
be married to the problem - and not the solution. Your solution will then
become more viable and targeted toward your customers’ needs.
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