They Ask, You Answer, 2nd Edition

14 Addressing the Elephant in the Room

Since my first days as a fiberglass pool guy, one of the questions I heard for years was: “Marcus, be honest with me. What are the problems with a fiberglass swimming pool?”

And for years, just as I had done with the cost question, I danced around the answer. But once we embraced the philosophy of They Ask, You Answer, I said to myself, “Enough is enough.” That led to my business partner, Jason, writing what turned out to be an epic article on the website titled: “Top 5 Fiberglass Pool Problems and Solutions.”

Now you might think it would be insane for us to write an article with that title and, believe me, so did many people in our industry. But look at it this way: How many of our competitors were addressing that question on their websites? Zero.

Yet, how many consumers were wanting to know the answer to said question? Pretty much all of them.

The reason for these clear efforts to ignore such a question comes down to a psychological issue that almost all businesses struggle with, and that’s the concept of addressing the elephant in the room.

Herein lies one of the great dilemmas of the digital age: Consumers are not dumb; nor are they ignorant.

If the marketplace believes (rightfully or not) that a product, service, brand, or other factor has problems—they’re very likely going to find out.

As a business, you have a choice:

• You can allow the consumer to discover your elephant(s) themselves and in turn lose trust in you.
• Or the minute ...