The Risk Tolerance vs. Problem Scale

If I walk up to you on the street in midtown Manhattan and hold out a bowl of gluten free, apparently healthy, mostly frozen coconut oil-based ice cream - would you try it?

Someone thrust a Dixie cup full of this at me the other day while talking rapid fire about antioxidants and hair proteins as I tried to catch the 5:49 Metro North back to Connecticut, and I, as you probably guessed, did not. Why the heck would I? What’s the upside?

This is exactly how most of us treat our first customers. We wander up to them when they’re in the middle of something else, pushing something that isn’t all that urgent and carries a lot of risk.

Which brings us to the relationship we’ll have to nail to actually get those first customers: The Risk Tolerance vs. Problem Scale.

Our customer’s risk tolerance will be directly related to the scope of their problem. We need to plan for this.

Problems

Problems have five amplifying characteristics - they can be painful, urgent, expensive, growing, frequent, or, ideally (for us), a combination of the five.

If a problem is painful and urgent, my risk tolerance for trying something new to solve it will increase. If it’s also expensive and growing, the risk tolerance grows even more.

Problems acquire these characteristics based on the available alternatives.

If I’d just stumbled out of the desert after walking through the sweltering heat for a week with no food or water, a coconut oil ice cream sounds pretty good. Whether I believe the hair protein benefits or not.

If I love ice cream but can’t eat dairy, and my family is going to town to get ice cream after a Sunday BBQ, I feel the pain of not being able to eat ice cream a bit more acutely. And, if you’re standing on the sidewalk with a cart selling coconut ice cream, I’ll probably buy it.

We talk about Hole Problems at Tacklebox a lot - if your customer is stuck in a hole, they won’t ask if the rope you toss them to help them out is organic.

A customers willingness to try your product is almost 100% based on their current situation, which you have little (no) control over. This is tricky.

Timing and Messaging

The way to put your finger on the scale here is to find the exact moment your customers have as many of the problem characteristics as possible (usually due to a lack of alternatives), and make sure you’re there.

And, once you are, speak directly to the sticky situation they find themselves in.

Put a sign on your coconut ice cream cart that says “Dairy Allergy? You can still have ice cream,” because that’s the message that meets the customer’s problem (not something about hair protein).

People will need to take a risk on you. Make sure they’re in a position where it’s actually likely. The correct timing, plus the correct messaging.

So, where are your customers when the problem goes from nice to have to “throw me that freaking rope!”

How can you be there?