Downstream Problems
Make sure the problem you are solving isn’t the result of another, different problem.
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I spend a lot of time helping enterprise software companies improve their sales process. It’s one of the few ways I can have a big impact on a company from the outside, and sometimes the best person to see problems in a sales process is an outsider. Improvements to your sales process can reduce sales cycles, increase win rates and accelerate your growth rate.
Unfortunately, almost universally the first thing I notice is that the problem is not the sales process.
The most important factor into the success of your sales process is the quality of your leads. A company with a bad sales process who consistently reaches people desperate to buy will always outperform a company with a perfect sales process that has a trickle of people who are just curious. The more motivated your buyer, the more likely the sales process itself won’t matter.
We tend to focus on the specific problem we see (sales process) instead of the upstream problem (leads) which has created it. If you are constantly fixing downstream problems, you’ll never succeed! The upstream problems will just create new problems for you elsewhere.
This is true for a surprising number of problems! If you are having trouble hiring great people, it’s less likely to be your interview process than whether you get the best people to apply in the first place. If you are having trouble with customer churn, it likely has to do with the kinds of customers you are attracting in the first place. Many of our problems are created by other problems further upstream.
So, before trying to solve a problem ask yourself: what are the inputs to this problem, and are those inputs the actual problem? Any process, function or decision you make has a series of inputs and outputs. By focusing on the inputs first, you can figure out if you need to move upstream to solve the problem or not.
The great thing about identifying and solving upstream problems, is that they often solve a whole variety of other problems you have! Some of those downstream problems might be things you didn’t even realize. For example, if you improve your sales lead quality it will improve your sales process but it also might improve your churn rates! Motivated customers become happier customers.
In the chaos that is every day of your business, it can be hard to pick your head up and look upstream for more problems. It’s tempting to just solve the problem in front of you and worry about upstream problems later. When that happens, just remind yourself that it’s easier to solve one problem than many!
After a while, you’ll look for upstream problems instinctively which makes for great leadership.
For more on Decision Making, see: