The 3rd Third – Creating solutions to client problems

By Scott Sambucci | October 25, 2013

In “Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking,” Tim Hurson discusses the concept of “wave thinking.” Examining a problem not once, not twice, but three times to determine a solution:

• 1st solution = obvious
• 2nd solution = more interesting
• 3rd solution = creative

Ahhh… How about your client interactions? When you find a new prospect or begin learning customer needs, how quickly do we jump right to the first solution as it relates to our product. It’s the most obvious right? The prospect has a problem and has come to your website or agreed to a conversation with you. As you confirm the problem with the prospect, the most obvious tact is to discuss how your product solves that problem.

What if instead you just listened and then scheduled a second call a few days hence? What if you simply told the prospect – “I think I have a few ideas for your problem and I want to talk it over with my team some more.”? By the second conversation, bolstered with ideas and perspectives from your team on the prospect’s problem, you’d automatically present more interesting solutions that include your product and perhaps 2-3 ways to solve related parts of the prospect’s problem.

Then after discussing this 2nd level solution, you ended the conversation with – “I think there’s a few more ideas we can build on this. Can you bring in a couple of people from your team for one more round of conversations to analyze your situation? I think from there we’ll be able to craft a solution set for you and be much more able to develop a work plan to implement these solutions together.”

Wow – that would be something wouldn’t it?

[A big hat tip to Tina Seelig, who introduced me Hurson’s book in her book – “InGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity“. A very, very good read.]