Solve Your Clients' Problems and Grow Rich! How to Exploit Your New-found Market Knowledge

If you've been reading my previous articles, you already know your niche and target market. You know how to reach them, and how to research what they need. Now, following your research, you know what problems they have. So, what's next - how exactly do you exploit your new-found market knowledge?

The answer to that is that you create solutions to your clients' problems. But how do go about doing that? Read on to find out.

Creating Solutions

As you've undertaken your market research, you'll know the biggest problems faced by your target market. Take those problems and examine them - which ones come up over and over again?

As you read the list of problems, the resolutions to some problems will be obvious but others will be more complex and non-obvious. Shall we deal with the obvious solutions first?

Obvious Solutions

These may be obvious because the solution really is easy, or because you've come across the problem before, and have a solution. Either way, you'll be able to write down the steps for the solution. If you can effectively communicate those steps to a client, you potentially have a saleable product or service. This could be in the form of, say, an ebook, an article, a presentation or training course, a workbook, an audio or coaching services.

Incidentally, don't dismiss obvious solutions – some solutions you are used to implementing may not be so obvious to your clients. They may be very grateful for your solution, and be willing to pay for it.

Non-obvious Solutions

Then there are problems to which you don't have a solution, and the solution is non-obvious. These are areas where you'll need to do some work. You can use your own resources to solve the problem or you can engage the skills, experience and knowledge of other people who have come across the problem before.

Solving it yourself

There are many approaches to problem solving and solution creation that vary in complexity. I've found the work of W. Edwards Deming and his problem solving tools to be invaluable in solving complex problems. In Deming's approach, you work to find the root cause of a problem and eliminate it. But often such a structured approach is not required for straightforward problems.

Often, if we define the problem effectively, we are half way to the solution. Martin Roberts, in his book "Change Management Excellence" argues the need for a "Well-Formed Problem". This involves obtaining a clear and concise definition of the problem. The approach to obtaining a Well-Formed Problem is available online via Wikipedia or via Martin's book Change Management Excellence.

Once you have a clearly defined problem, it's much easier to see what type of solution is likely to resolve the problem.

Using other people

Another approach to solving problems where there is a non-obvious solution is to use other people. Here, you find people who have already solved your problem and have a solution that you can use.

You can get these solutions from a variety of sources:
Books
Courses & seminars
Colleagues, friends, other business contacts
Practitioners in the field.

When dealing with problems that have non-obvious solutions, you may find that ready-made solutions may be of help. But you're as likely to find that other people have ways of creating solutions with which you were unfamiliar.

Look Outside Your Own Field

Solutions or approaches from other disciplines are especially fertile areas to raid to create products or services for your target market. This is where it pays to read widely and mix with people from different disciplines and industries. So you might want to spend an afternoon in a large bookshop, looking through books from other disciplines. You might want to take a contact from another discipline out for a coffee and talk over your problems. You might want to join a MasterMind Group.

Whichever way you choose, you are likely to expose yourself to novel, creative approaches to problem solving that you can use to create products and services for your target market.

Summary

This article has outlined a number of approaches to create products or services for your target market that solve problems they experience. Whether you tackle obvious or non-obvious solutions, I've shared some problem solving strategies that can benefit you and your target market. The only thing that remains is to put it into practice. Over to you!