6 levels of problem urgency

How to recognise great problems with high sales potential

• How can you love the problem if you have never found real love? What is love?

• Jokes aside, if you've never found a problem worth solving, you might not know how it feels.

• Customer problems come in different levels of urgency. Some you should ignore, others are your best friend.

• I identify 6 levels, here’s how you can recognise them.

It’s simple: Only levels 3, 4 and 5 convert to sales.

Breakdown of 6 levels

1. Can’t experience: Ignore these people and don’t take their feedback on your product too seriously.

2. Never experienced: You can learn what a non-problem experience is like. Don’t take product feedback seriously.

3. Latent experience: You can test if your pitch, brochure or prototype works for people to recognise your product as a fix for their problem.

4. Experienced, not looking: People gave up, you can learn why people gave up looking. There is a high likelihood of sales here if your solution is great.

5. Experienced, active looking: Highest sales potential, yet they are hard to find. The high purchase intent window is often short.

6. Experienced, recently solved: Don’t bother to make the sale, but learn about their solution.

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How to use this?

• You find only levels 1 and 2: you need to adjust your target segment and often also the channel.

• You find only level 3: Try to reflect on your segment and adjust, but sometimes this fixes by itself over time.

• You find only levels 4 and 5: Lucky you. You probably have nailed your targeting and marketing. Now, go do sales!

• You find only level 6: The window to sell is earlier in their journey. Try to inject yourself earlier in their journey. This might require you to switch channels.

Must read next:

How to use this model to identify launching customers for your beachhead.

A case study using this framework on an actual startup

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