Stop Marketing What You Provide And Start Marketing What You Solve

Nobody wants the remodeling, training, consulting, coaching, mentoring, or repair services you sell.

What people want is for their problems to be solved. Solving problems must be the real focus of your marketing efforts.

CEOs, owners, and people buy better versions of their business, home, life, and bank account, not things. They want what they believe will help them feel good about themselves, achieve something higher, get relief from some level of pain or discomfort, avoid a sticky situation, or prepare themselves for the future.

It’s your job as a CEO or owner of a small business to understand the problems people are trying to solve and match your services to those very specific problems.

Very few people in the world want what you provide, they want what you solve.

There’s something to be said for a thorough, extensively understanding of your customer’s world. If you don’t take this seriously, everything else you do in term of marketing and sales will be far less effective.

A recent survey found that 80% of buyers don’t believe that the salespeople they deal with understand their business.

74% of B2B buyers choose the salesperson who was first to add value and insight in their buying process.

Clearly, insight into the problems customers are having is key because very few people want what you sell. That’s not a blow to you or your business or your solutions. I’m sure all are remarkable. People want what they believe they will  get, achieve, relieve, dodge, or acquire  based on buying what you sell.

Take the time to determine and list  the problems your ideal customers see and feel.  If you’re having a tough time thinking about your ideal client’s problems, think about the conversations you had leading up to your sales meeting, the things addressed in your discovery process or hopefully, you’re a good note taker and can revisit those for some insight.

So, your job is to understand the problems ideal customers value and are trying to solve and match your solutions to those very specific problems.

For example , a lot my firms prospective clients might say things like — I just want my phone to ring, I want to be on the first page of Google, I want more referrals, I want less marketing headaches, I want my website to generate leads, I feel like I’m wasting money on ineffective marketing, etc.

So my firm doesn’t sell strategic marketing or marketing plans or even consulting — all my ideal clients need to know about what we do is:

Another example, a massage practice:  They might have the best tables, oils, and most highly skilled therapist but all their customers seem to care about is that their pain and discomfort go away.

So that’s the promise they need to communicate, shout about and promote. The rest is an expectation — I mean doesn’t everyone in the massage business have highly skilled therapist.

By turning your small business marketing efforts into a problem-solving engine for your customers, you’re employing the golden ticket to having marketing success.