What’s the Difference Between a Business Issue and a Critical Business Issue?

Posted by Peter Cohan on December 6, 2010

0 comments | 1845 reads

If you have ever “lost” business to “No Decision”, the following may be one reason:

All of us have “Business Issues” that we face every day – and that we do nothing about. “My laptop is slow, my cube is small, the commute traffic is terrible…” and so forth. We just live with these Business Issues. We may not like the status quo, but we don’t take action. A Critical Business issue is one that we are willing to address through the application of tangible resource – time, people, or money – to get it fixed or solved.

Here’s a wonderful example of the difference:

How long would you continue to drive your car with a slightly annoying squeak coming from the front wheels? A few days? A week? Month? Longer? Very few people will take their car to have the squeak diagnosed right away. Many more will do nothing, unless the squeak gets (markedly) worse. Others won’t do anything until something overt (and most likely bad!) happens… It is simply another “Business Issue” as long as the situation doesn’t change.

On the other hand, what if the brake warning light came on or the squeak changed to a horrible howl? Most people would get their car looked at right away, even if it meant taking time from work or home life, and spending a few hundred dollars for the repair. That’s because the issue is now critical – a Critical Business Issue!

Many sales opportunities go to “No Decision” because the customer didn’t consider the problem to be sufficiently important to address – it wasn’t perceived as a Critical Business Issue.

Republished with author's permission from original post by Peter Cohan.

Peter Cohan

Peter Cohan is the founder and principal of The Second Derivative, focused on helping software organizations improve the success rates of their demos. In 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange on software demonstrations. He is the author of the book Great Demo! - how to prepare and deliver surprisingly compelling software demonstrations.

About Peter Cohan |
Connect:

Categories:

1845 reads
Print
Email

0 comments »

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

Input format

Filtered HTML

Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <hr> <table> <tr> <td> <th><ul> <ol> <li> </li><blockquote> <colspan> <rowspan><object>
Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

Post

Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

More information about formatting options

Notify me when new comments are posted

All comments

Replies to my comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

MarketPlace

Global Customer Experience Management (CEM) Certification Program

[May 30-31, Frankfurt; July 25-26, Hong Kong] An internationally recognized program with proven track record of success - being run for 34 times in 13 cities with attendees from 50 countries, the program is developed based on the U.S. patent-pending Branded CEM Method which aims to drive customer loyalty and brand differentiation with quantifiable business results. Limited offer: USD300 early bird discount.

Join us on May 29th in New York City. Stuart Ryder, SVP, Mobile Research Lead for Ipsos IOTX & Roxana Strohmenger, a leading Forrester analyst, will be in attendance to share best practices and new trends in mobile market research.

[June 12, Sir Francis Drake Hotel] Gregson Siu, Vice President, Ariba Business Operations, Ariba and Bob Thompson, CustomerThink, will be in attendance to share best practices, new trends and latest research to help you develop your customer experience program.

Social Networking and sCRM International Congress in Colombia

[June 25-26, Bogota] Thirteen international thought leaders will present, from different perspectives, the trends, the uses, and the magic - as well as the reality - of Social Networking and how it impacts the way customers are doing/will do business.

Driving ROI With VoC

Walker has identified multiple ways to measure ROI – there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. This paper will address each and conclude with some recommendations to help B-to-B practitioners evaluate which ROI approach will work best for their particular business need.