The easiest products to sell are those that solve urgent problems. People are looking for solutions. All you have to do is be findable.

But what if you've got a solution to a problem that nobody's noticing?

Even if solving it would have a big impact, the sad truth is that those solutions are a tough sell.

  1. First you have to find your prospects (they're not looking for you).
  2. Then you have to get their attention (they're thinking about something else).
  3. Then you have to awaken them to the problem (they don't know it exists).
  4. And you have to convince them that it's important (they've got other important priorities tugging at them).

Once you've accomplished all that, you're finally on an even footing with sellers of solutions to the problems they already recognized.

Today, David Frey pointed out a video to me that got me thinking about how to sell solutions to invisible problems.


Dirty walls are an invisible problem. Paul Curtis would never have thought to clean that first wall if there hadn't been an extra dirty spot on it.

But here's the magic -- once he'd cleaned that spot, he realized the rest of the wall was dirty. He tried to smooth the problem over, but it was too late -- the problem was now visible! In the end, he had to clean not only the one wall, but all the walls.

That's lesson number one -- find a way make the problem visible, and impossible to gloss over.

Reader Comment:
tezuka said:
Unfortunately, you are so right, most things that would have a huge impact on entire societies, never get noticed. I developed the first and so far only theft-prevention system for restaurants, a quite complicated, yet simple to use software for rest...
(join the conversation below)

But there's another lesson that's probably even more important.

The wall you see Paul doing his "reverse graffiti" on in the video had probably been getting dirtier for years with hardly a notice. Until somebody cared, it wasn't going to get cleaned. Until somebody noticed, no one was going to care.

I don't know that his work inspired a lot of wall cleaning, but I'm sure it raised awareness.

So here's lesson #2: sometimes, the best way to raise awareness of an invisible problem is not to talk about the problem.

You could spend your whole summer preaching the need to wash walls, and nobody'd listen. If they heard you at all, they'd forget by the time they were out of earshot.

Instead, do something interesting to draw attention, and use that attention to highlight the problem.

If Paul's goal had been to get more walls cleaned, he might have displayed some pictures comparing new, clean walls and old, dirty ones, showing how much more beautiful and pleasant they make life in a city environment. (If you've ever seen brand-spanking new freeway overpasses, tunnels, etc., you've probably been struck by how incredibly clean and nice they look.)

With the right approach, do you think he could have rounded up some volunteers to spend half a Saturday de-griming their part of the city? I do.

Solving urgent problems is definitely the easier route. But if you've got your heart set on solving an invisible problem, think of how you can get attention, and use that attention to get the problem under people's skins.