How to solve valuable problems for your customers
Solve high-priority problems for influential people in your customer group
Welcome to A Founder’s Life for Me! I’m Alek, and I provide practical recommendations on how to build your company (or career) through my experiences building tech companies. To get free access to all past and future posts, please subscribe below.
Why I’m writing this now
In “Four principles for successful, long-term customer relationships,” I shared my equation for strong customer relationships:
Last week, I covered “How to build trust with your customers.” Today, I’m talking about “Value.” I’ll provide my framework for identifying high-value problems and give you practical ways to apply this framework yourself.
Solve high-priority problems for influential people.
The priority-influence matrix
If you have the customer’s trust that you’ll deliver what you promise, the question then becomes, “Is what you are delivering valuable to them?” If you are solving a problem that isn’t a priority for them, they won’t care. If you are solving a problem that is a priority for them, then you’re off to a great start!
If your customer is a business or a group of people, you also need to understand who it’s valuable to in the organization.1 I use the following priority-influence matrix to help frame my own thinking on solving valuable problems.
When you are solving high-priority problems for influential people in your customer group, your output will generally be considered more valuable. The priority-influence matrix generally encourages me to “follow the money” and evolve ideas so that they move “up and to the right” on the matrix.
SolidlyAI: Applying the priority-influence matrix
Since I started working on SolidlyAI in 2022, the idea has evolved, generally growing toward solving higher-priority problems for more influential people. Here are some of the iterations of SolidlyAI and my corresponding analysis of where each falls on the priority-influence matrix.
“AI notetaking assistant” iteration
Idea: SolidlyAI helps project managers quickly clean up and distribute the notes they take during a meeting by… (etc., etc.)
Priority Analysis: (Low) While sending notes after a meeting is a frequent and cumbersome task, if you ask a project manager for their “top 5 problems in their day-to-day,” note-taking wouldn’t typically be on there.
Influence Analysis: (Low) Project managers work across departments in an influential way but don’t necessarily have budgets to spend on productivity tools or a clear path to acquiring a budget for a tool like this.
Consequence: When I started sharing SolidlyAI with people, I received a lot of encouragement that it “looked cool.” But that encouragement rarely translated into anybody actually using the product. I iterated on different improvements, but the crux of the problem was, “This problem isn’t a high enough priority for anyone.”
“Retention and upsell for customer-facing teams” iteration
Idea: SolidlyAI helps customer success teams drive retention and upsell by… (etc. etc.)
Priority Analysis: (High) “We’d like to make more money” is a fairly universal business problem. So, directly tying SolidlyAI to driving revenue helps build a stronger value proposition. In businesses with long-term customer relationships. reducing customer attrition is also often one of the best ways to increase revenue. So, unless the business already has very high customer retention, this will be a high-priority problem.
Influence Analysis: (Medium-to-high) The decision-maker is the Director (or higher) in charge of the customer-facing department. Leaders of those teams are responsible for maintaining customer relationships and passing the voice of the customer to the rest of the organization. Given the importance of those responsibilities, they are typically high influence within an organization.
Consequence: It’s been much easier to get conversations, introductions, demos, and pilots. There are a lot more “yeses” in these conversations because SolidlyAI is solving a high-value problem. The challenge isn’t one of value anymore. It’s a trust challenge. If I’m saying, “I will increase your customer retention (and therefore your revenue) by 2% by…,” people are going to be interested, but I need them to trust that I’ll actually be able to deliver in order to build a lasting customer relationship. For more information on how to build trust with your customers, check out my most recent post, “How to build trust with your customers.”
Doing your own Priority-Influence Analysis
In general, the more directly you can tie your product to a revenue-driving or cost-reducing outcome, the better. Those problems will, on average, be a high priority for high-influence people in an organization. Even if you are driving revenue or reducing costs, the following two frameworks will help you hone in on high-value problems.
Priority analysis
The best framework I have for priority analysis is to talk to people in your target customer group and ask them, “What are the biggest problems you have?” If you are solving one of those problems, you have a high-priority problem. If not, then you’re solving a low-priority problem. The more people you talk to, the more confidently you’ll understand the relative priority of their problems.
Influence analysis
The best framework I have for influence analysis is to ask people, “What would be required for your organization to sign up?” If there are a lot of steps in the process, you’re solving problems for a low-influence audience. If there aren’t many steps, or that person has the autonomy to make this decision on their own, then you’re solving problems for a high-influence audience.
Solve high-priority problems for influential people.
The easiest way to get your foot in the door with a potential customer is to solve a high-value problem. The priority-influence matrix helps you hone in on high-value problems. The highest-value problems when you’re selling to companies are ones that are 1) high priority and 2) high importance for influential people in the company.
Recommendation: Analyze your own ideas by asking yourself, “Who would this be important to? Is this a problem that they would be desperate to solve? Does this person have high influence in their company?” You can generally get in the right ballpark by asking yourself these questions, but you will need to talk to your customers and ask them, “What are the biggest problems you have?” and “What would be required for your organization to sign up?” to fully understand where your idea falls on the priority-influence matrix.
When you find a high-value problem to solve, you then need to build trust that you will solve that problem for your client. For more information on how to build trust with your customers, check out my most recent post, “How to build trust with your customers.”
If you are interested in more content like this, subscribe through the link below. If you want to discuss how to apply this, email me at newsletter@alekhagopian.com.
If your customer is an individual, you don’t have to worry about the audience's influence, but you still need to worry about the problem's priority.