What could she do about this?
A young psychologist explained that she regularly did government-funded assessment tests on very young children with potential learning disorders.
The process troubled her. If the child had a learning difficulty this left the teacher (and the parents) with the knowledge, but no strategies to deal with it in the classroom and at home.
How did he position his offers online?
A middle-aged entrepreneur with a high profile in sales and marketing, organisational and property development, training and speaking was starting his own business. He had so much to offer but couldn’t articulate clearly what it was he did, or wanted to do, or for whom.
How could she gain control of her website?
A woman starting an innovative business in chemical-free cleaning to assist with asthma and other respiratory diseases in the home, had her website hosted by a networking colleague. After a while, he no longer returned her calls. She couldn’t access details of either her domain registration or her hosting environment.
This didn’t trouble her, until she learned she couldn’t use her website to build a passionate army of advocates to sell her chemical-free cleaning message.
Identifying a problem is a privilege
The point of these three scenarios is less how the problems were or could be solved and more how they came to be articulated. While each person may have been able to present the problem, the wider solution seemed distant or daunting.
Like many busy people getting on with their working lives, it was easier to put these concerns to one side.
In each of these and countless similar scenarios, a successful solution could have a powerful impact on their businesses, their futures and potentially, the lives of thousands of others.
What if the mountain of knowledge the young psychologist and her colleagues were sitting on could be translated into individual posts, each with a strategy for these learning difficulties?
How could they build their database to deliver these posts virally and create a community of supportive teachers and parents? How many children might benefit from the right teaching strategies at an early age?
Privilege is bestowed as a result of trust
People don’t volunteer their vulnerabilities. It’s a privilege to engage in a conversation that leads you to clarifying a problem and offering a solution.
The first part of gaining trust is to understand who suffers the problems you can solve. You’re not going to gain trust applying a tourniquet to someone who’s suffered a heart attack.
In addition, business owners who jam their shelves full of every solution to every problem are likely to find this retail approach to acquiring custom costly and for little or random return.
The research part
Ask everyone. Ask them what they need, not what they want. Ask them what do they think their problems are. Ask your existing customers, your suppliers, your contacts, your database. Ask open ended questions, (questions to which the answer can’t be Yes, No or Maybe). Compile a spreadsheet of the responses to identify the most common problems you’re able to solve.
Become a problem solver beyond solving the problem
Widen your ideas. Think about what you can solve as the potential to change, make a difference and benefit all the stakeholders. It’s one thing to regain control of a website for someone, it’s another to identify strategies for creating a community to positively impact children suffering from asthma.
The reward as much or more than the money in the bank, is the difference you can make.
This post,’Can I Solve Your Problem?’, is part of the monthly Word Carnival hosted by Tea Silvestre, Word Chef.. This month the topic is: Market Research: Finding Out What Your Ideal Customers Really Really Want.
The research part is where a lot of folks fall down. And not for lack of trying, but because human beings often don’t know the truth about their own situations. We can ask (and should ask) lots of questions. But we also need to remember that may not be enough. You’ve got to listen to what people are saying when you’re NOT asking questions. That’s often when the truth comes out. You’re right tho — it’s a privilege to be able to solve a problem!
Tea Silvestre recently posted…7 Ways to Use Facebook to Find and Research Your Target Market
Excellent point Tea. It is what you learn when you’re listening that will inform your best approach. Still you have to be in a place where you can have an active listening conversation that’s meaningful to both parties. Potential clients will talk a great deal and not necessarily with complete frankiness when it is in the exploratory phase, so it is often when they are actually engaged as a client that you really find out what you need to know to assist.
Great advice, Sandy, especially about open-ended questions. It’s a technique that good reporters also use so that people talk to them – it’s amazing what you can find out if you can refrain from trying to over-manage the process.
Sharon Hurley Hall recently posted…Why My Clients Think I’m Psychic
I am grateful to my copywriting husband Sharon for this piece of wisdom. Should be innate, but rarely is! Yes there can be a tendency to over manage, or to be over zealous in your efforts to serve!
I am so strike with the phrase, Identifying a problem is a privilege! How true is that? and how often do we assume we know what the problem is or jump to a solution after a few minutes of conversation. I recently had a conversation with a potential client and I must have been channeling you, Sandy. I say this because even though she asked me what I did, I kept asking her to talk more about her issue. I am giving her a proposal in a couple of days and that extra time to allow her to think through the problem out loud willl make a big difference. Thanks for the wisdom!
Clare Price recently posted…Fast and Easy Market Research – The Social Way
That’s a really great observation that in pursuing the problem with someone, you can help them gain insight into the issue. We just keep learning don’t we! Thanks Clare.
I love the idea of problem solving as a privilege.
So often we get burnt out by the people asking for our help (the same questions, the same glazed-over expressions when we try to re-frame it for the fifth time and the final big moment of clarity when that sixth metaphor sticks). We forget that it’s not something that everybody and everyone can do – because it comes so easy to us that it makes no sense to honor that gift.
Happens at least once a year to me – I get burnt out on teaching, I don’t want to meet or talk to people, I just hole up. It’s what makes us human, I suppose – but we always have to remember our place and get back to the point where we realize it’s actually a huge privilege to understand the things we do, the way we do, and to be able to help folks with their issues.
Great post Sandy!
Nick Armstrong recently posted…I Hate That – How Extreme Niches Connect You with What Your Ideal Customers Really Want
Nic, you so aptly describe a common situation when you have been in a service industry for sometime. And I certainly do not wish to romanticise the issue. Many clients are in fact, non-compliant, something that continues to puzzle me, sort of owner-business-sabotage. But that is the subject of another post for another time!
However, when you’ve listened or researched hard enough, or it’s just obvious, or the client actively works with you to identify and solve, or you have a creative epiphany in the shower or however that moment occurs, AND the client comes on board and is excited, invigorated and enthusiastic, then solving their problem is genuinely a privilege. I guess we should count ourselves fortunate that we have experienced that.
Thanks for you kind words Nic.