It’s a conversation as old as the hills in the B2B marketing world:

VP of Sales to CMO – “We need a painkiller, our product is a vitamin”

CMO to VP of Products – “Sales says we need a painkiller”

VP of Products to CEO – “But our customers can’t live without it”

CEO to VP of Sales – “We’ve gotta sell what we have, figure it out”

Well, let’s get a bit pedantic for a minute and look at the definition of painkiller and vitamin before we offer an alternative, “magic!”

Webster’s defines painkiller in a very straightforward way, “something (such as a drug) that relieves pain”.

Vitamin, on the other hand is a bit more complicated. Webster’s very long winded definition is “any of various organic substances that are essential in minute quantities to the nutrition of most animals and some plants, act especially as coenzymes and precursors of coenzymes in the regulation of metabolic processes but do not provide energy or serve as building units, and are present in natural foodstuffs or sometimes produced within the body”

So, vitamins are “essential”, while painkillers are relievers of pain. Interesting to note, neither, at least definitionally, are problem solvers. I’ve written before about why the problem statement is SO important to B2B sales. If the problem is a deficiency of an essential element used by the organism, they it seems to me, fix the problem, rather than mask the symptom. You don’t see a high demand for skin creams to treat the pain of scurvy sores, because consuming Vitamin C solves the problem.

{As an aside, noted sales trainer John Costigan says “great salespeople find a hangnail and convince the customer they need a tourniquet”. Notice he did not say they need aspirin!” And raising the stakes on the problem is a big part of success in sales, marketing and messaging, but I digress a bit…}

So, let’s just sell vitamins then? Well, two problems there, vitamins are “minute in quantity” and critical to survival, but they DON’T create advantage or let the organism thrive, outcompete and win. When our scurvy-ed out sailor sucks a few lemons it doesn’t make him an America’s Cup winner, it just keeps him alive.

Now painkillers and vitamins are gazillion dollar markets, no doubt. But that’s where the metaphor kinda peters out. B2B Technology providers need to solve problems. And they need to do it in new and unexpected ways in order to unseat alternative solutions, earn meaningful profit, and grow faster than their competitors. In short, they need to sell magic, solutions that seem like magical potions, ones that don’t just put customers out of some pain, masking a symptom, ones that don’t just let them survive. No, they need to SOLVE PROBLEMS in UNEXPECTED AND SEEMINGLY MAGICAL WAYS that create strategic, highly valuable and transformative outcomes from their clients. After all, that’s why we call breakthrough medicine, “Miracle cures”.

And when we arm our buyers with magical potions, we help them transform their personal and business worlds and become heroes. And how cool is that? Who wants to sell boring old painkillers and vitamins when you can sell magic!