Symptoms That Look Like Problems And How to Solve Them

My back tooth has been bothering me for at least a few months.  It wasn’t so bad at first; sensitivity to cold now and then and a little painful if I bit into something hard.  Perfectly tolerable.  That is until a sharp pain started shooting up and down my spine if I bit into something that landed the wrong way on that tooth.

To make a long story short – I went to the dentist hoping that I didn’t need a root canal.  He didn’t see anything wrong and sent me to a specialist.  She did some tests and voila!  It wasn’t the tooth at all!  The problem came from the surrounding gum line.   I knew it!  I’d had this annoying problem of food getting stuck back there.  Then I’d dig around and floss until it hurt.  It figures it would be a matter of time before the poor gums just gave up.

Typical Sales and Marketing Symptoms, Problems and Solutions — Revealed

It’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about symptoms, problems and root causes.  But this real-life experience got me to focus on how much time, effort and money we waste trying to fix symptoms when finding the root cause would solve our problems and save us some money.

• Customers orders start to decline:  This little symptom often goes unnoticed for a while because the decline isn’t obvious.  It’s easy to ignore because the decline is often a small one.  The customer will usually say that their orders are down and the economy is bad.  While that may be part of the reason — it’s not the whole reason.  Don’t make the mistake of just going to your sales team and telling them to “Get in there and sell more.”  Dig into which products or services are down and what end-use products they go into.  Look into the growth of that industry and see if that’s so.  Has you customer lost out to a competitor?  Is the product that your product or service goes into being replaced by something else?
• Customers and your sales people say that your price is too high. The only reason that people complain about price is because they don’t have a good enough reason to choose you.  If people willingly pay $3.50 for a cup of coffee that costs pennies per serving, you know that people are purchasing more than dark liquid and sugar in a cup.  When you start hearing that your price is too high, then that customer has forgotten why they purchase from you in the first place.  This is a pure marketing problem.  It shows that there is a disconnect between what’s important to customers and what you are selling.  When customers can’t match the dollars they are spending to the value of what you offer — you will hear them complain about price.  The way to solve this problem is to start surveying your customers about what’s really important to them when they are thinking about your product or service.  Don’t be afraid to ask about what other alternatives they consider.  Then ask them to rate all their alternatives on performance.  This will uncover where you need to tweak to better align your offer to what your customers value — and increase your price.

These two symptoms are the most common I run across that appear to be sales problems — but, in essence are marketing issues.  Funny how the best way to solve them is to get closer to your customer and understand what’s important to them and what drives their decisions.

What are some common symptoms you come across that look like problems?

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