Why Solving Customer Problems Is More Important Than How Many Clients You Have

Writer for DDI on Medium
Nov 3, 2022
3 min read

Updated: Aug 5

Solving Customer Problems — “I don’t know why my fungus won't go. I was here 2 months ago!”

When a client checks for your expertise, they aren't wrong for doing so per se. After all, if they're paying for a specific service, they need to be confident you have experience doing whatever it is they're truly paying for. While with expertise comes the freedom to give advice, I believe it's disingenuous to leverage 'how many clients you have' as expertise if you're not considering the relationship those projects have with each other.

The lack of rules and structure around what is considered expertise is what's wrong with the use of the word expertise in Trinidad and Tobago. Some say expertise when they mean the client count of the number of years they've been doing X. Others assert working like a horse as justification for what's being paid. For most people, it simply means knowledge. It's become this arbitrarily used word.

You can't conflate years of randomly doing loosely related things with focusing on mastering one specific thing. And you certainly can't justify a bogus job title merged with the responsibilities of all the positions you wish to fill but can't afford as expertise. But more importantly, knowledge doesn't mean effective application.

So, what's worth focusing on when targeting prospects with a certain need?

Let's go back. What is expertise, really?

"An exceptionally high level of performance on a particular task."

How is expertise defined?

I tweaked Forbes definition of expertise to; the vast knowledge you have on a subject over the average person, and what you're able to proficiently teach others not just because of your education, but more so because of your body of work in that space solving specific problems, because I feel that it forecasts perfectly (for the prospect), the evolution of expertise that isn't just about their education and knowldge but also their unique experiences. Something they always miss.

So, going back to the first question...

HELPING THE PROSPECT IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM THEY HAVE

One of the biggest problems with local prospects is their inability to recognize what they truly need help with.

What is the goal of specializing?

"To become great at doing something hyper-specific so your services are easy to self-identify with."

The most reliable way to accomplish this (when you have no advertising budget) is to articulate the problem you solve, productize it, and they'll self-identify with what you specifically do.

Once you get past the introduction part, you'll quickly realize they’re also good at pointing out what I call ‘decoy problems'. Which is fine when you know what to look for, but the disinformation is threatening to the project of a client:

Who thinks a one-off pedicure is the answer, and not an intensive treatment plan
Who thinks flashy design is the answer, and not a brand
Who thinks content creation tips are the answer, and not evidence of reliability

They'll miss the help standing in front of them and, by extension, logically go down the wrong path. So, service providers dealing with decoy issues need to know where the disconnect is to connect the dots to their services to create the ah-ha moment for the client.

That was the value of the conversation with Kate. Like many people, she associated expertise with quantity.

“How many clients have you had similar to our company?" she asked.

My reply?

“You’ll be my first, but the final decision isn’t and shouldn’t be based on the number of insurance clients I’ve had, but the kind of projects I’ve done; I’ve successfully helped past clients find what they need to say to attract the type of people they want to work with”.

I then followed up with examples of clients with the specific problem she had to validate what I previously stated.

Smiling, she said, “I understand, I understand! And, I like what I’m hearing!”

So what I've always known is that when the problem you solve is prioritized, then and only then, how many clients you have means something to the prospect, not because of popularity "everybody going here", but because of specificity: your body of work points in one direction.

She became my first 15K project.

It wasn't the number of clients I had that earned her trust. It was that I knew how to solve a specific kind of problem she didn't know she had.

I am the Founder and Visual Brand Strategist at The BrandTUB **Get online in one day with The One-Page™ **Schedule a call if you need help narrowing in on your real problem **Sign up to receive these weekly articles in your inbox if you’re not quite ready to work with me yet.