They Ask, You Answer, 2nd Edition

13 The Big 5, Topic 2 Problems: How to Turn Weaknesses into Strengths

Now that we’ve covered the first subject of The Big 5—or the five content subjects that move the needle in every industry, let’s move to the second one: problems.

You may be thinking, “What do you mean by ‘problems,’ Marcus?”

Well, the simple answer is this: When people buy, they worry more about what might go wrong than about what will go right. It’s true.

It is for this reason that, for example, when someone is buying a 2017 Ford Mustang, his or her main searches would be either “2017 Ford Mustang reviews” or “2017 Ford Mustang negative reviews.”

But what they would not search is “positive reviews 2017 Ford Mustang.”

Make sense? In fact, I’d venture to say as a consumer you’ve searched by this point in your life hundreds of “negative”-based phrases, but no positives.

As buyers, although we want to know the good, bad, and ugly, we are mostly concerned with the ugly.

The same was true for me as a pool guy. Let’s imagine for a minute that you had met with me back when I was a pool guy, and you had received a quote for a fiberglass swimming pool. Let’s say you liked me as well as my pools, and you decided you might just want to buy one. But just to keep me honest, you elected to get a quote from a second swimming pool company—a concrete pool company. Let’s call this company Concrete Joe’s Pools.

Once you meet with Concrete Joe and tell him you met with Marcus, the fiberglass swimming pool guy, what do you think ...