- The one question you need to answer before building your course.
- What’s your problem? As in the one your service is solving.
- Should you be solving this problem? Are people looking for answers to this particular problem?
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Last year, I was at a mastermind event with some of the smartest marketers I know.
We holed up in a conference room at the back of a boutique hotel in Celebration, Florida.
A young waiter named Austin, brought me smoked whiskeys at regular intervals.
To my neverending delight, when he lifted the cake-topper-style glass lid from the carrying tray, smoke billowed out into the room and made my hair smell like an elegant estate library on a dark and stormy night. More about that dark and stormy night at another time, but for now, let’s talk about the coffee…
Contrasted with the delicious, elegant whiskeys came frequent trips to a hip coffee shop down the street.
To get to this coffee shop, you had to brazenly walk past a Starbucks. And on your way back, you had to slink past said Starbucks brandishing your “this coffee shop is fancier than yours” to-go cup.
On one of these trips to the coffee shop, I was telling another marketer my brilliant idea to take over the world…
“I’m going to call my service THIS. And it will have THESE colors on the front cover. And the headline on my sales pages will say THIS.”
He calmly turned to me and said, “Uh-huh. What problem does your service solve?”
I was stunned.
I hadn’t given it much thought, but I got his point…
Tip: If you don’t know what problem your service solves, then neither will your customer. Products and services only exist to solve problems. Otherwise, we don’t need them!
The Problem-Solver Question I Ask All My Consulting Clients
Fast forward to today, and I’ve incorporated that phrase into almost every consultation I give.
I listen to the coach talk about the product or service they’re building. And then, as compassionately as I can, I say, “What problem does that solve for your customer?”
And you know what?
They get the same blank look on their face that I got that day in Celebration, Florida.
Takeaway: Not knowing what problem you solve is a common mistake that most coaches make when they market their services.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a brand new coach or have been coaching for years, every time you create a new product or relaunch an old one, you need to have a heart-to-heart talk with yourself about the problem you solve. And it needs to be a doozy.
Try to avoid solving problems that people don’t want to fix.
There are “hangnail” problems. And then there are problems that Perry Marshall calls “bleeding neck” problems.
These are the problems you want to solve.
If you need a quick place to start looking for problems to solve, start with your niche. If you’ve settled on a niche, then it’s time to look at the conversations people in that niche are having.
Based on what you learn in the conversations, you can tailor your program or course to your best customers and grow from there.
What’s next: If you’d like to discover how a former 9th grade Algebra teacher/SAHM helps multi-million-dollar businesses increase sales with simple “teach for action” techniques, then go to www.9BuyerSystem.com
