Win Responsibly

Let’s imagine someone has a problem that’s costing them a thousand bucks. You have a solution that will fix the problem, and you sell that solution for a hundred bucks. Shockingly, they don’t want to buy your solution. You’re frustrated because it seemed like a pretty clear win/win situation. Don’t be frustrated! Instead, let’s look at the reasons this happens:

1. Certainty. How certain are they that this solution will actually fix their problem? Even you aren’t 100% certain, so they’re significantly less so. If they think your solution only has a 5% chance of fixing their problem, then the solution is only worth 50 dollars to them – less than what you’re selling it for.
2. Problem Misidentification. They might not actually agree that their problem is costing them a thousand bucks. Maybe they think it’s less severe. Not every problem has an easy price tag. Someone with bad advertising for their business might not agree on what it’s costing them to not fix it.
3. Source Misidentification. Maybe they do agree on the cost of the problem, but they disagree about the root cause, and whatever they think the root cause is won’t be affected by your solution. Their water bill might be a thousand bucks a month, and you’re selling a plumbing service to fix the leaks for a hundred. That’s a great deal, but if they think that the high water bill is actually caused by their children showing for too long, then your solution doesn’t address that.
4. Alternatives. Even in the scenario where they agree on the source of the problem, the cost of the problem, and the likelihood of your solution fixing it, they still may not feel like your solution is the best one. Maybe someone else out there can fix it for 80 bucks.
5. Immediacy. Budgets are real. Spending a hundred bucks to save a thousand is a no-brainer, but if the spend is a hundred thousand to save a million? Even if you agree on the solution itself, you might just not have a hundred thousand bucks laying around. Even if you do, it might be going toward solving problems that are costing even more than a million bucks.
6. Trust. Of course, all of the above questions have to get filtered through the lens of belief. Your solution could directly address the root cause of the most important and expensive problem they have with a high likelihood of success and with no better alternatives, but do they believe that?

So you set out, essentially, to sell someone a thousand dollars for the low price of a hundred dollars. They turned you down. If every one of the above points was addressed, then a “no” would be insane. So, how do you address every point?

Solve certainty with statistics. If this solution worked for this problem in 95% of prior cases like yours, then that’s close to a 95% likelihood that it will solve yours, too. Solve for problem and source misidentification with data and discovery. Show them how to identify and label their problem and make sure they get to the same conclusion before you do anything else. Solve for alternatives by being easy and effective. Remember, finding an alternative doesn’t mean that alternative is better, even if it’s cheaper. And the cost of searching is non-negligible when you have a costly problem right now! Be easy to work with, offering low-stakes contracts or easy revisions if they find something else, and they’ll rarely look. Solve for immediacy by making sure they can see the return on investment quickly – if you can solve a thousand-dollar problem for a hundred bucks, can you solve 200 dollars of their problem for 20 to get started? That frees up operating capital and lowers risk, if there’s some version of that you can do.

And you solve for trust by doing all of those other things. You don’t ask for trust until you’ve shown that you deserve it.

So the next time you try to solve a problem, remember what they need to get there. The win/win isn’t always visible from both sides at first. And it’s your responsibility to get it there.