You Can be Great If You Really Want To

Turn a Problem into a Business Opportunity by creative thinking.

People pay money to create a problem and then somebody else turns that problem into a business opportunity. How do we do this? First step is to examine and define in great detail what exactly the problem is? Then look at innovative ways to turn the problem into a business opportunity.

Problem – We are eating a lot more then we should. Opportunity – exercise classes, weight loss diets, larger size clothes & diet drinks / foods.

Think of traffic, then think of bottlenecks! Problem – a lot of people stuck in traffic. Opportunity – Billboard advertising & more demand for entertainment on the move!

Problem – In this day of high speed life, people don’t have time to sit down and eat. Opportunity – Create a fast food franchise that serves hot food within minutes for customers to take away and eat on the move.

Problem – people are drinking more. Opportunity – diet drinks, drink dispensers, low calorie alcoholic drinks, vitamins, more fun drinks & definitely more counselling!

In our previous business, we had a problem when we were manufacturing specialised, shock absorbing pallets. We always many pieces of a certain size of wood left. I sent our salesman round local businesses to see if he could find a use for it. In the end we ended up making “button-ups” which had a 100% profit margin after expenses for pieces of wood which we used to throw away!

Problem – Higher number of asylum seekers & refugees. Opportunity – low cost housing, lower paid labour force and increased demand for economy products!

Problem – More spam! Opportunity – more demand for new software, better firewalls & more experts needed!

What problems have you faced recently? Can you nail it down and turn it into an opportunity?

Here are the steps we should take to turn a problem into a business opportunity:

1) Identify the problem
2) Do overall market research
3) Get a team in to collectively debate the problem
5) Sleep on it
6) Do some more market research
6) Apply creative thinking and problem solving strategies to identify a business opportunity

Many questions can be answered by market research. What is the current state? Where is the market going? Who are the main players? How do consumers feel about the current solutions to their problems? How can we meet their needs better?

We can turn every challenge into a business opportunity. Every business process can be improved. Every problem is a business opportunity. Every time you have a bright idea, make sure that you write it down in an ideas notebook. Can you solve last weeks problems in a way which people will pay money?

When you are trying to improve your business, how do you decide which problem to work on first?

» Do you work on the one that annoys you the most?

» Do you work on the one creates the most frequent fires?

» Do you work on the one that you secretly most enjoy working on?

Today’s topic is problem solving. But I’m bringing it to you with a twist.

We’re not going to discuss problem solving tools and techniques. Many forests have died giving their life to supply the thousands of pages written about problem solving techniques. If you are interested in that topic, search the internet or log on to
Amazon.com. You will find hundreds of articles, books, and seminars on the topic of how to solve problems.

No, today we are going to explore a much rarer and more important problem solving issue: how to choose the right problem to solve. It’s not as easy as you think.

A very dear, brilliant friend of mine, a retired professor from the University of Kansas’ School of Business, spent over 30 years studying how businesses and non-profit organizations improve themselves. His research revealed a startling fact:

Managers rarely choose the right problem to solve!

More often than not, the management teams he researched actually came up with great solutions to the problems they worked on. Unfortunately, those problems had no bearing on the overall performance of their companies.

Solving problems that aren’t the biggest hurdle to your business’ success, no matter how well you solve those problems, is not going to produce the improvements you seek.

If the problem you solve doesn’t have leverage, you are wasting time, energy, and money. Worse yet, when you put a lot of effort into solving a problem and it doesn’t improve your situation, you naturally assume that you came up with the wrong solution. So, you go back and try to solve the problem again. You may keep wasting time, energy, and money on that very same problem because you will be convinced that you are solving it wrong.

If you had chosen the right problem to solve, one that has leverage on your business’ performance, even a less-than-perfect solution would have had positive impact. You would have concluded you had come up with a great solution because: look at those great results! Time to move on to the next most important problem.

But how do you know which problems have leverage?

To give you some idea of how difficult picking the right problem can be, Ken identified 29 different processes that control how well a business performs. The leverage of each of the 29 differs for every company and situation. You’ve got to pick the right one to fix.

Here’s a little search tip. Look closely at the problems that you have been avoiding. The ones you haven’t been working on because you really don’t want to face them. The big bad monsters hiding in your closet.

You can just about bet that one of them will be the one you need to work on the most. It will be the one that has the most leverage on your company’s financial improvement. (For most contractors, that biggest and baddest monster hiding in the closet is the distaste for selling.)

This is why I wrote, posted on my website, and distribute my special report The 10 Biggest Mistakes Contractors Make.

I narrowed down the vast pool of mistakes contractors make to the set that has proven to be the most common and threatening. I wrote the report to help you identify the mistakes that get contractors in serious financial trouble.

If you suffer from any of those problems and are not working to solve them, you are putting yourself in harm’s way. If you are not suffering from any of those 10 problems, then you are ready to establish the six systems that propel contractors to greatness.

To build your business, focus on the right problems. Not the ones that are fun to solve. Not the ones that create the biggest heartburn. Focus on the ones that will most improve your bottom line.

The moral of the story: picking the right problem to solve is vastly more important than solving the problem perfectly.

By the way, if you would like to take a quick quiz on the status of your business and see where you may need to focus your attention, go to my web site (www.FilthyRichContractor.com) and click on Test Your Business.

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In the old way of making cold calls, we offer a sales pitch to a perfect stranger, cross our fingers, and hope for the best! This really doesn’t work very well in building a business relationship (or any other relationship, for that matter). This is done best by stepping into the world of the other person and finding a problem we can solve for him or her.

That’s how we begin a conversation with another person – talking about them rather than talking about ourselves. It’s just a very common dynamic that occurs in any human interaction. When you’re dating somebody, for instance, if you just talk about yourself, they’re not going to like you very much!

It’s the same in cold calling. Don’t talk about your solution for a while. Talk instead about their problems for a bit.

It’s a movement of dialogue. This dialogue is around talking about their world and not about your product. That’s the shift. All you have to do is identify three or four major problems that your product solves, and use those problems as phrases to begin the dialogue of your cold call.

You see, this new cold calling approach has to be tied to a specific, real problem that the person experiences in their world. This is needed in order for them to feel comfortable having a conversation with you. When you’re relevant to them and their world, they trust you. They sense that you’re there to help them solve a problem – not sell a product.

So remove yourself for a moment from what you have to sell, and think about what problem your solution solves for somebody.

For example, if you’re in the a coaching industry, think about what problem you’re solving for your clients. And then in your cold calling, address the problem right away. You might say, “I’m just calling to see if your company’s open to the idea of using coaches to improve management performance.”

When you use the word “open,” people respond positively. Who would say “no” to being open? You’re not challenging them. You’re not forcing a solution. You’re not even saying what you’re offering to sell. You’re simply asking a question around whether they have a particular problem.

This also invites a question back to you. Potential clients will often ask at this point who you are and what you do. They might say that they already have a service, but they may need some more help. So it opens up even more conversation.

Here’s an example of how salespeople focus their cold calling around something that appears to be a need, but they haven’t tied it to a specific problem.

Let’s look at financial services. In this case, people who sell financial services start cold calls with a focus on the future of the person’s situation. They might say, “I’m just calling to see if you’d be open to some new ideas to help you increase your income.”

The better approach here would be to problem solve. For example, “I’m just calling to see if you’d be open to identifying any gaps in your portfolio that might be holding you back in some way.”

It’s about problem solving and closing gaps, as opposed to promoting a beautiful future. “Hire me and I’ll make you a lot of money!” Everyone does that. That’s the problem. It gets old and very tiring

You see, there’s no push here. There’s no sales pitch. There’s no presentation. The conversation is focused on really seeing if the person has a problem, and if they want to solve it.

After the first few phrases, you have a natural conversation back and forth. They may say, “What’s your service?” “How much does it cost?” And that’s the time to begin to really tell about your service—but not before that.

If you don’t talk about your solution for a while and instead talk about their problems, you’ll find yourself having better and deeper dialogue, with more trust.

So be careful not to immediately go into a presentation and spend the conversation talking about your service. In this new way of cold calling, you’re asking in a very conversational tone whether the other person has a problem that you can solve.

You won’t believe how this simple technique can make such a difference in the way potential clients receive your cold calls. Tension and resistance are vastly reduced, and results are vastly improved.