Are you looking for the "Right Answer"? Or the Right Question?
I think in today's business environment, people are constantly looking for answers.
Answers to why their funnel is empty.
Answers to why their employees keep leaving (or they keep having to lay people off).
Answers to why the business environment has changed so drastically.
Answers to why they need to care about their people nowadays.
Answers to why things can't just be like they were.
We're all out there seeking answers. And not just any answer, the "right answer".
But, how can we get the right answer when we're asking the wrong questions?
Question = Answer
When we look at questions from a business perspective, generally you'll hear things like:
How can we get more traffic to our website?
How can we increase our close ratios?
How can we move people through our funnel faster?
How can we increase our profit margin?
How can we retain our best employees?
(and whatever other questions you might be asking yourself).
And then, conveniently, someone comes along with a product or service that is the Magic How.
You get more traffic on your website with SEO!
You increase your close ratios by using AI!
You move people through the funnel faster with more emails!
You increase your profit margin by cutting costs!
You retain your best employees by creating an awesome nap room!
Except the problem is that there are HUNDREDS of businesses who are telling you the ONE thing you can do.
SEO can drive more traffic to your website. But so can social selling. And so can an optimized LinkedIn profile. And so can an awesome TikTok page. And so can a podcast...and on and on it goes.
And we would blame the service providers by not giving us all the information. But even THEY don't have all the information. They've gone all in on ONE way to do things that work for them. Or maybe that don't EVEN work for them, but are something they learned how to do.
So, if we can't put the responsibility on the ANSWERS...
...we have to put the responsibility on the QUESTIONS.
Are your Questions actually YOUR Questions?
So, let's take an example question from above: how can we increase our close ratios?
Well, go ahead...what are some ways you could increase YOUR close ratio?
No, no no...not how can PEOPLE increase their close ratios.
How can YOU increase your close ratio?
This is what makes most questions in business lazy; we forget to include ourselves as part of the framework.
When we say, "how can we increase our close ratios?", we're not really asking how WE could do that. We're asking how OTHER people have done that.
THIS 👆 is an important distinction.
When we go out and do research, what we're learning is what someone else has done. Which isn't necessarily BAD, unless you interpret it as something you SHOULD do (solely because someone else did).
And people are doing this ALL. THE. TIME.
Our competitors are SEOing for this, so we have to too. Our competitors do TV ads, so we have to too. Everyone in our industry sells THIS way. Every one of our competitors says THAT.
We get so caught up in the competition that we forget about actually WINNING.
Because winning never came from being the SAME as the person next to you.
It came from being BETTER than the person next to you. FASTER. STRONGER.
When we let someone else dictate what we should do, and erase all of our unique awesome sauce along the way, we aren't standing out any more. We are blending in.
YOU are part of the Equation
But when you actually ask the questions that matter to YOU, THAT'S when things start to get interesting.
You start to hear what your people actually have to say.
You start to get creative.
You start to innovate.
And you start to stand out in the market.
Which actually helps answer ALL the questions. Because you start to know what YOU would do, and not just what others would do.
So, if your questions (to date) have not been getting you answers that are fixing the problem, maybe take a gander at your questions 💡
P.S. If you're having a hard time asking meaningful questions about your marketing and sales efficiency, we should chat 😉
