Present Opportunities, Not Problems
B2B Sellers commonly frame their offering in the form of a problem together with their solution. For example, many Sellers will say something like: “[Operational] processes are wildly ineffective at most organizations. We can help you do better.”
While a problem-based approach is likely an accurate description of the issue and how Sellers add value, Prospects often react negatively to a problem-framing, hurting sales.
1. Prospects Do Not Agree they Suffer from the Problem
First, it's common for the Prospect to simply disagree they have a problem. You can’t make a sale based on a problem the Prospect thinks doesn’t exist, is irrelevant or is already being solved.
Seller: “90% of IT projects fail”
Prospect: “Yes, but that’s why they hired me. In my last two jobs…”
Seller: “Legacy code is a growing problem for large companies”
Prospect: “My CTO says we don’t have a legacy code problem”
Seller: “Interview practices are broken at most organizations”
Prospect: “Yes, that’s why I hired my new HR director and she’s fixing things”
It doesn’t matter whether the Prospect does in fact suffer from the problem or not – the Prospects’ feelings will control and by Seller’s own standards, the Prospect will feel justified that the offering is not necessary. Sellers create unnecessary sales risk by necessitating that Prospects agree on a problem-framing to close a sale.
2. Problems Make Prospects Feel Defensive
Problems often necessitate a judgment of what went wrong and who is responsible. Decision-makers at the Prospect often feel defensive or worry they will be blamed based on the narrative around the new offering. For example, an IT executive will likely feel threatened by a new data management platform pitched as a way to “automate inefficient IT processes”.
Employees at the Prospect who are involved in the “problem” will often seek to control the narrative around it and their involvement, introducing unnecessary noise and office politics into your engagement.
3. Problems Don’t Generate Excitement
Businesses do not get excited about fixing problems. To a Prospect, solving problems enables it to meet objectives it should have already met. Thus problems are solved quietly behind the scenes and rarely create corporate heroes worthy of a promotion.
Opportunities > Problems
A more effective approach is to re-frame your offering as an opportunity. Opportunities enable Sellers to have greater control over the sales process by focusing exclusively on value creation.
Opportunities create excitement for a better future – helping companies achieve objectives they could not otherwise meet.
Opportunities remove artificial requirements that Buyers agree they have a “problem”.
Opportunities elicit the “fear of missing out,” biasing Prospects to learn more, enabling better discovery and more focused conversations on how to create value.
Note there is nothing inherently wrong about discussing problems in a sales context, but the Prospect should bring them up. A Seller’s upfront message and value-proposition should be focused on maximally engaging the entire market. A salesperson’s job is to leverage the intrigue from a new opportunity to discover the Prospect’s specific problems and relative pain. The Seller’s solution can then be positioned to meet the specific needs the Prospect raises, whether that is solving a problem or not.
Translating Problems to Opportunities
Fortunately, all problems can be re-framed into opportunities to better engage your market without changing your underlying offering. While there is often some nuance, here is a simple mental model and example to translate a problem into an opportunity:
A problem-based approach is likely used because Sellers have identified that many Prospects in the target market suffer a similar problem that the Seller can solve. The “problem” then is not unique to a given Prospect, it’s common in the market.
Rather than label each Prospect as having a “problem”, identify the negative business impacts of the problem on Prospects and define the entire market as struggling with those issues. This is the “current way” of doing business, and avoids labeling the Prospect or the market negatively.
Next, identify the positive business impacts of solving the problem for a Prospect and generalize that value to the broader market. This is the “new way” of doing business in the market.
The opportunity is to do business in the “new way”, with its various advantages together with the ability to stand out relative to its peers who are stuck in the “current way” of doing business.
Example Translation for Low/No-Code Providers:
Initial Problem-based Approach:
“Legacy code is a major problem at most organizations, forcing companies to focus on maintenance rather than building quality software. Low/No-Code is the future of enterprise development”
Translating Problem→Opportunity:
Every company relying on software has legacy-code because people historically used code to build all software
Based on customer feedback, the business impact of code-based software & legacy-code to Prospects is that it takes too long and is too painful to build and update software at the pace the business needs to thrive
Opportunity-based Approach:
“Our software enables enterprises to build and change software at the speed of today’s business needs.”
