What Problem Are You Solving

A 5-3-1 works through 5 questions:

1. What's the problem you're solving? 

2. What's the customer that you're solving it for? 

3. What's your solution? 

4. What's the right strategic positioning? 

5. What's the plan and execution to get there?

When I ask the first question to companies that are just starting out, they give me an answer and we usually spend a bunch of time discussing whether that’s actually a problem that customers are having or whether it’s a problem they’ve created to sell their product as the solution.  An important conversation to have and it tends to frame the overall thinking and focus of the right strategic formula.

If you’re not just starting out, then you have a business.  You have a product.  You have customers.  You and your team are working hard to grow.  You’re past the initial point of starting up but maybe there are things that aren’t going as well as you’d like and you’re trying to get to the bottom of why that’s happening.

I’m sure you’ve reviewed the product, sales and marketing.  But do you ever step back and ask, “what strategy problem are we solving?”  I know it seems obvious.  At first blush even reading the question may irritate you.  You aren’t new.  You have a vision for your company, and you’ve done so much so how could it even be possible that you aren’t clear on the problem you’re solving.

I’m asking because you would be shocked by how frequently companies can’t answer that question.  It’s far more often than you can imagine.  Here’s why.

Companies start by solving a problem that guides them to a group of customers and a solution.  The challenge is that, as they grow, the complexity of the business and what they are trying to accomplish can get muddled.  At the beginning, it was just about bringing a solution to market and seeing who would buy it and how much of it you could sell.  Now you’ve sold a lot of it and there is pressure to keep selling more and more.  To do that you need to keep evolving product, sales, marketing, customer success, etc.  Customers may ask for things and are willing to pay.  Their requests can help guide some of your product roadmap and create the solutions that will continue to drive your growth.

What if, along the way you have solved a bunch of different customer problems and have a product with more features?  Is that bad?  Of course not.  But let’s go back to the question I posed.  Do you ever step back and ask, “what problem are we solving?”  You can add features and help customers in a variety of ways but too often companies lose sight of the fact that they are no longer focused on solving the problem they set out to solve.  They have become a business built on a product or products and offer those products for customers to buy – which they do.

The struggle is that if you solve too many different problems then you leave it to your customers to define what you are.  You have a successful business, but you’ll lack the first foundational piece of a lasting strategic formula.  You’ll also leave the door wide open for competitors that may have more limited solutions but are able to clearly articulate the core of how that solution helps.  They will stand for something, and you will risk standing for everything.

I get that I’m oversimplifying here and that you’ve thought through your messaging and what you want to be about, etc. but that isn’t the same as the clarity of purpose around the problem you are solving for both internal and external communication.  It drives everything.

A company must be clear on the problem they are solving all the time.  So, if you think there’s a chance that you’re not clear, ask the question, and if it isn’t obvious then don’t stop asking until it is.