By Ryan Berry

Ask most business owners what their company does and they can answer almost immediately.

A restaurant serves food. An insurance agency sells insurance. A contractor builds houses. A marketing company creates websites and advertising. An accountant prepares taxes and financial statements.

Those answers aren’t wrong, but they don’t necessarily explain why customers choose to spend money with those businesses.

Customers aren’t usually buying the thing you sell simply because they want the thing. They’re trying to solve a problem. Understanding that difference can completely change how you market, sell and even operate your business.

A customer doesn’t necessarily want a new roof. They want to stop worrying about the leak every time it rains. A business owner doesn’t necessarily want a new website. They want more customers to find them and trust their company.

Someone buying insurance isn’t excited about purchasing a policy. They want to know their family, home or business will be protected if something goes wrong. The product is what you sell. The problem is why someone buys it.

This sounds simple, but businesses lose sight of it all the time. We spend so much time inside our own companies that we naturally begin talking about ourselves. We talk about our experience, equipment, services, certifications, technology, awards and capabilities.

Visit enough business websites and you’ll see a lot of sentences beginning with “we.” We have been serving the community for 30 years. We offer exceptional customer service. We use state-of-the-art equipment. We provide a wide variety of services. Those things can certainly matter, but customers are usually asking a different question: Can you solve my problem?

That question becomes especially important when a business is struggling with marketing. It’s easy to assume the answer is more advertising. Spend more money on Facebook. Buy another billboard. Send more mailers. Post more often. Increase the Google budget.

But spending more money telling people about your business won’t necessarily help if the message doesn’t connect with the problem they’re trying to solve.

Before spending another dollar on advertising, it may be worth asking what your best customers were actually looking for when they found you.

The answer might surprise you. A customer may choose a mechanic because they need someone they can trust, not simply someone who can repair a transmission.

A company may hire an accountant because the owner is overwhelmed and wants someone to make sense of the numbers. A family might choose a local restaurant because they need somewhere comfortable where everyone can eat together.

A manufacturer may hire another company because it needs reliability more than the lowest possible price.

The deeper you go, the more valuable the answer becomes.

This is also why two businesses selling nearly identical products can have completely different strategies.

Imagine two contractors who both build homes. One discovers that its best customers

are busy professionals who are overwhelmed by the construction process. That contractor could build its entire business around making construction simple, organized and predictable.

Another contractor might discover that its customers care most about customization and want to be heavily involved in every decision. That company could build its experience around flexibility and choice.

They’re both building houses, but they’re solving different problems.

Once you understand the problem, a lot of other business decisions become easier. Your marketing message becomes clearer because you know what matters to the customer. Your sales process improves because your team knows which questions to ask. Your employees understand what kind of experience they’re supposed to deliver.

You may even discover new products or services you should offer because you understand what customers are actually trying to accomplish.

There’s another important part of this exercise: Sometimes the problem you originally built your business to solve isn’t the same problem your customers have today.

Markets change. Technology changes. Competitors change. Customer expectations change. A business can continue doing exactly what it has always done while slowly becoming less relevant. That’s why good strategy requires occasionally stepping outside the daily operation and looking at the company through the customer’s eyes.

Try something this week. Instead of asking, “What do we sell?” ask, “Why do our best customers come to us?” Better yet, ask a few of them directly. Don’t assume you know the answer. Listen to the words they use and the problems they describe. You may discover that the most valuable thing your company provides isn’t the thing you’ve been advertising.

Businesses naturally become experts in what they do. The great ones become experts in why their customers need them.

Question of the Week: What problem are your customers really paying your business to solve? ■