What Problem Do You Solve?
I’m back with another More Abundance Live with Adele Michal. I help women entrepreneurs and business owners sell more authentically and with confidence so that they help more clients and have more income.
Watch the video or read the article below to learn Step 2 of how to clearly communicate what you do so that you and your business stand out in a noisy marketplace.
How do you answer the question: What problem do you solve?
Every business solves a problem.
In general, we solve the problems of helping people be happier, healthier, and wealthier.
Those are the top three categories of problems businesses solve:
· happier relationships and lives
· healthier bodies
· wealthier with money and meaning
We are in the age of specialization. Gone are the days when you could just say, “I'm a self-growth guru,” like Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra. They came to prominence several decades ago and things have changed a lot since then.
Things have gotten a lot noisier in the marketplace.
You have to communicate more clearly and with more presence in order to stand out and attract your ideal clients.
There are a lot of parts to standing out in the marketplace and, this part is really important.
What problem do you solve?
· Are you a mom who has a special needs child – who helps other mothers with special needs children have a life, be able to cope, and not feel completely drained and overwhelmed? That’s one example.
· Are you like me and help women business owners sell with confidence and authenticity?
· Are you a marketer? Do you help people market their services and their products to the right customers?
· Are you a health coach? Do you help people feel better, look better, lose weight – and just be happier in their body?
· Are you a spiritual coach? Do you help people have a better relationship with their inner divinity and with the Great Spirit or whatever you like to call that? What problem do you solve?
Let me tell you this story about a woman that I spoke to a few months ago.
She is a hairdresser and also sells a skin care line.
Her message about the skin care product was quite general like, “We all have skin. Couldn’t everybody use my product?”
Well, probably everybody could use your product, but is everybody going to WANT to use your product?
Because remember: You need to be selling people what they WANT, not what they NEED. Then, once they buy from you, then you give them what they need.
(For more on this point, check out my previous blog post)
As we talked further, she told me that, as a teenager and as an adult, she has acne. The skin care line she sells is the only thing that’s really helped her heal her acne, other than prescription medication, which she didn’t want to take any more.
I said to her, “Wow, that is a really clear distinction about the problem you solve: Women with adult acne and teenagers with acne can use your services and your skincare line to get real help.”
She solves the problem of adults and teenagers with acne who do not want to use prescription medication to clear it up.
You may say, “Well, but everybody could use her product,” but she doesn’t have the bandwidth or the money or the marketing budget to talk to everybody.
When you think of the big companies that do have big marketing budgets, they don’t market to everybody either – like McDonald’s. They don’t market to people who prefer organic food. They don’t market to vegans. They don’t market to vegetarians because they sell meat.
A lot of times, people are afraid to get very narrow in their niche or in the people that they serve.
You can get too narrow or into a niche that doesn’t have the money to pay for what you’re doing – in which case, that maybe comes a non-profit or a pro-bono project.
It doesn’t mean you can’t serve those people – but you may not have a business serving those people – like unemployed people or homeless people or women who are getting back on their feet after being abused. That’s why there’re service organizations and churches that help with that. You can certainly participate there – but it may not be your business.
Please don’t be afraid to get narrow, to get specific, to get clear. I think there’s a lot of temptation to stay diffused and not clearly in focus because it helps us to stay invisible. If you have a business, you do not want it to be invisible. You want it to be visible and appealing!
I work with women business owners. I get clients who are women who don’t own a business. I get clients who are men who own a business or are a service provider.
It doesn’t mean that that’s the only client you’re going to get – but that’s the person you can help most. That’s the message that’s going to help your business get more clients.
What problem do you solve? Please think about that this week.
One more thing: It’s not about your modality.
If you’re a healer or a money coach or an energy worker or a software developer – it’s not about the way you do things. It’s not about the nuts and bolts of how you do what you do. We love it because it’s ours – and we’re very passionate about it, and we think it works great.
Other people don’t care. They really don’t care whether you do Reiki or hypnosis or Ayurveda or yoga or whatever – they don’t care.
They want the destination – not the delivery.
If you’re prone like I am to talk about your modalities, how you do what you do, put that to the side for now. You can do talk a bit more about your modality (but not much!) in a sales conversation.
In a marketing message, you want to devote your time and communication to the attention that you have from the other person on answering the question: What problem do you solve?
That’s the step for today. I’ll be back with the next step. If you missed Step 1 in this series, it’s here.
PS If you feel like would be helpful for you to have a conversation about the problem your business solves, go to my website and click on the “Free Consultation” link on the upper-right-hand side of the navigation bar.
If you’ll click that link, you can schedule a time to talk with me. I would love to help you figure out what problem you solve and if I can help you further, we can talk about that.
Until next time, I'm wishing you great prosperity and clarity in knowing the problem that you solve.