“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” That’s how Uri Levine, the co-founder of Waze, the world’s leading navigation app which Google acquired, boiled down the secret of successful entrepreneurship.
Speaking recently at a technology conference, Uri Levine explained how engaging with the problem can lead to more interest and motivation to find a solution, “Assume I build a start-up, and I say it’s using an AI machine learning algorithm to make a new navigational system — you say, ‘who the heck cares?’ But if I say I’m building a system to help you avoid traffic jams, then suddenly you get connected with the problem, and it’s much easier to understand.”
According to Levine, “Engaging people with the problem rather than the solution makes life easier; and it remains a beacon, a north star for where you’re going.” That’s true for technology startups, and it’s also true for sales. Customers buy to solve significant problems; they don’t care about the features of your solution (unless those features address their problem)
Unfortunately, many salespeople turn Levine’s slogan on its head; they fall in love with their solution, not the customer’s problem. That typically translates into the salesperson talking about their solution in too much detail early in the sales conversation before the customer can fully consider their problem's consequences or ramifications. Without an urgent problem as the customer’s motivator, your sales opportunities can stall
So how can you “fall in love” with the problem? Or, more accurately, help your customer focus on their problem. Simple, early in your sales process, follow these four steps:
Expanding the problem to cover other business areas also creates more political support within the customer’s organization to solve the problem.
A great motivator is helping the customer understand a problem’s bottom line dollar impact. If you have expanded the problem to other business areas for the customer, quantifying the problem can require a complex analysis. And, quantification is even more complex when the problem is less tangible, such as increased risk or image-related issues.
Here is an extensive list of questions that will help you quantify the customer’s problems.
Great salespeople, like successful tech entrepreneurs, understand that problems, not solutions, motivate people to act. You should relentlessly focus on your customer’s problems early in the sales conversation, helping them identify, expand, quantify, and prioritize their problem.
Once your customer “has fallen in love with the problem,” you can then pivot and discuss how you can help them solve their problem.