Sell the problem

Seth struck gold again for us with his piece all about selling the problem. We’ve been talking about that a lot here at watchmethink. As always Seth articulates it slightly better, so I’ll hand over to him to explain the beautiful paradox which is that ‘a lot of people aren’t willing to embrace that they have a problem unless they also believe that there’s a solution… so part of selling a problem is hinting that there’s a solution that others are using, or is right around the corner.

Guess what. Yup.

Using the example in the article, we could easily publish a list of the top 100 companies who are ‘closest’ to their customers (by time spent listening?) . . and ‘all of a sudden, the bottom half of the list realizes that yes, in fact, they have something that they need to work on’.

Marketing plan written.