The Language of Problems

Humans speak, and understand, the language of problems. The language of solutions, or benefits and features, might as well be Latin.

But, nearly everyone ignores this because it’s way more fun (and easier) to talk about solutions.

Here’s the difference:

Here’s a non-cartoon example:

Let’s say the heat in your house won’t stay at the temperature you set it at. You want it to be 68ºF (20ºC) — but when you set it for 68º, the heater will blast hot air until your house is 80º. When you set the thermostat at 67º or below, the heater won’t kick in until it gets down to 55º. You try resetting the system, changing batteries in the thermostats, and Googling. Nothing works. You’re freezing or sweating.

Meanwhile, you get a bunch of direct mail from HVAC companies who can easily solve this problem, all vying for your business. They say things like “Regulators for only $89!” and “New filters for $59 — cheaper than any competitor!” and “Free consultation for new customers!”

Unfortunately, these companies are speaking Solution Language, so it doesn’t register.

Then, you’re driving through town and see a sign on the side of a bus that says, “Heat won’t stay at the temperature you set it at? Is it either 80º or 50ª in your house? It’s probably a simple fix, and we can do it for you in under an hour.”

You slam on the breaks and call the number, because the company is speaking problem.

Human decision-making is cause and effect — problem, then solution. If you mess up the order, you’ll miss most of your customers.

This becomes obvious when you see it a lot.

I was walking through NYC and noticing the signs on the street — solutions blend in, problems stand out.

This blends in:

This stands out:

There are absolutely tourists walking around the morning of their flight back home that just realized they forgot a gift for a family member and don’t have much room in their suitcase.

You’ll see it in emails, too.

This means nothing:

I need to search for context — what problem would this solve for me?

When I go to their website, it’s still tough to discern what they do or why, but I think it’s marketing strategies for startups that don’t have marketing employees?

In which case, this would be 10000x better:

“Does the two-hour block you try to hold for marketing strategy every week get pushed off to put out customer fires? You can’t afford a full-time marketing employee and an agency would take too much time to catch up to speed.”

What about this?

This is a bit closer, and at least it’s short.

But if the problem is that your WeWork might shut down, speak problem:

“Worried your WeWork might shut down? Stressed about finding an option that has comparable amenities, price, and location?”

Here’s a pretty good one, except they flipped the problem and solution:

“You want to improve user onboarding but your developers are busy, so your conversion rate suffers” would have been a KILLER H1.

The challenge, of course, is knowing what the problem is and being specific to it.

But if you remember that in every interaction with customers — they speak PROBLEM, not SOLUTION — your messaging and conversion will improve.

And you can still talk and test solution — it just has to be a response to the problem. It’s secondary. You have this problem, we can fix it. The how doesn’t matter — trust is build through knowledge of the problem, not details of the solution.