Category Archives for "Marketing"

0 Frequent and Persistent Problems

So, we have had a look at chronic and acute problems.  The next two questions in the Circuit Questionnaire ask similar questions about frequent and persistent problems.

Is the Problem Frequent?

A frequent problem recurs.  It may be worth asking why it recurs.  Is it something in:

It can of course be any combination.  Your customer may have identified they have a recurring problem.  They may have a good idea what the reason is and approach you because they think you can solve the problem.  Depending on what you sell, you may be happy to hand your solution over or concerned to probe a little deeper.

Or they may not have clue what the cause of the problem is.  They cannot see a pattern and turn to you for a fresh pair of eyes.

Is the Problem Persistent?

A persistent problem may have been there for a long time.  It is possible the client may have no idea when or why the problem started.  They may have noticed it and over time realised it is a problem and needs to be resolved in some way.

It may be worth asking whether it is a constant presence, like mould growing on an internal wall or a high density of frequent problems.  A fire alarm that often trips out could be seen as a persistent problem, especially if it doesn’t trip out often enough to call for doing something about it!

So, a member of staff whose behaviour triggers problems could be seen as a frequent problem.  The problem may be persistent where several members of staff adopt the same behaviour.

Frequent or Persistent?

This is not just semantics because frequent and persistent problems may need to be approached differently.  If a staffing problem is one person, the chances are they are the cause of the problem.  They need more training or they have a grudge or they are stressed.

If it is a persistent problem, affecting several staff the chances are the problem is elsewhere.  It may be not so much that staff need more training as an issue with the training itself.  If one person has a grudge it could be their problem; if several display similar behaviour maybe they have a point?  One stressed person may have a problem at home, if it is several people maybe the problem is in the work they are doing or how it is organised.

If you sell mouse traps and someone has mice, it is perhaps a simple sale.  If they keep coming back, is it a frequent problem or persistent?  At what point does anyone ask, where are these mice coming from and is there any way we can address the source of the problem?  If you sell mouse traps, that’s fine, you know the problem and you have plenty of customers.  A specialist in rodent extermination may have a more challenging approach.

3 Introducing the Pareto Principle

Most people will be familiar with the Pareto Principle.  It states that 80% of what you get out depends on 20% of what you put in.  If you omit 80% of what you do, you still get back 80% from your business.  The problem is knowing which 20% of your activities are the key ones.

A book that offers a helpful explanation of how the Pareto Principles applies to business is “80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More”.  Its author, Perry Marshall is a successful American marketing guru.  The book explains the basics and offers links to the author’s website for some helpful marketing tools.

If this topic interests you, I recommend the book as a thorough introduction to the topic.  Like many of these topics, you learn more by paying attention and experimenting in the real world.  Here are a couple of insights based on the book.

Your Offer Portfolio

Let’s say you have several customers who are willing to purchase a product or service from you for £100.  A few of these customers would be willing to spend more on your offers, perhaps £1000 or even £10000!

The Pareto Principle suggests that 20% may be willing to pay more, perhaps up to £1000.  Maybe 20% of those customers (4% of the original) would pay £10000 for the right offer.  The idea is you still make offers at £100 but add the more expensive offers to your portfolio.

If you can find customers who are willing to pay more, the chances are you will have less work to do to break even or make a profit.

Let’s say 100 people have bought your £100 package.  Now you could argue that the figures imply 500 people would be willing to pay £10.  These would give you an income of £5000, equivalent to 5 people accepting the £1000 offer.

But note, it may actually be easier to find the 5 willing to pay £1000 (or the maths suggest 20!) than the 500 willing to spend £10.  Note the Pareto principle is statistical and so all figures are illustrative and real figures may be different but will support the principle.

You may need to have some low-end products to build a customer base but once you are established then the chances are with the right offers, a few people will pay higher prices.

Personal Development

If you have your own business the chances are you are trying to market something you are good at.  Your most valuable work may be delivering some product or service.  The Pareto Principle suggests you will be spending 20% of your time doing the thing you’re good at and the rest of the time doing all the other things that are necessary for your business.

Just imagine if you could spend 80% or more of your time doing the stuff you are good at.  You would be able to focus on what sells and so focus on the 20% of your market that generates 80% of your income.

This is why businesses employ staff, people who can do the 80% of the necessary work, to allow the business owners to do what they do best.  This 80% covers a range of activities.  It isn’t just admin but may be things like financial management, marketing, etc.  But it could also be housework.

One objection to this may be that it is exploiting others.  So, long as you pay a fair wage, what you are doing is opening up opportunities for other people, which is what businesses exist to do.

As soon as you have consistent income, it is worth considering what can be delegated to others to free up time to do what you do best.

Pareto and the Local Economy

Pareto is not necessarily all good news and its implications for the local economy, are at first glance, bleak.  Next Friday, I’ll explore the implications of Pareto for the local economy.

Have you used the Pareto Principle in your business and to what effect?

1 How to Identify Preventable Problems

So, the problem you address is a problem experienced by your market.  It helps if you have experienced the problem too because that shows you understand it.  However, the problem must be owned by your market.  In today’s post I shall discuss some early questions about preventable problems in the Circuit Questionnaire.

Is this a problem that occurs at a specific point in time?

This question asks whether the problem is acute or chronic.

Acute problems happen at a specific time and usually have a clear cause.  Everything was going well until something happened that triggered the current problem.  Sometimes, removing the cause will help solve the problem.  However, it is not always possible to remove the cause and the challenge is to make changes in response to it.

A chronic problem has been around for some time with no clear cause.  There may have been a cause a long time ago but the problem has become a state a being.  Here the reason for the problem may be internal; the person experiencing it will need to make changes to tackle it.

Acute and chronic problems are not all that different.  Most problems have characteristics of both.  So, an acute problem triggered by an event may be no problem at all for one person and an insurmountable obstacle for another.  You can point to the cause and know the day and hour when the problem kicked in but the issue is really how the person responded to it.

Sometimes the cause is a presenting problem, there is another deeper issue.  If someone comes to you seeking removal of a presenting problem, is it your job to do as they ask or probe a bit deeper?

Some businesses deal with the immediate problem.  They are not offering to diagnose deeper problems; they specialise, it’s what they do.  So, a pest exterminator exterminates pests.  If someone approaches citizens’ advice and asks for help with mice infestation, is their job to help them find a suitable contractor, probe a bit deeper or both?

Or is it something that it is worth preventing before it happens?

This question implies potential customers may not be aware of the problem.  This is a problem health services face all the time.  How do you persuade people to make changes to their lifestyles on the grounds that such changes will prevent problems in the future?

Eating these and similar foods may cause type 2 diabetes in the future. Whose problem is this? ArtsyBee / Pixabay

What is the problem here?  The problem you are going to prevent in the future, may well be your problem.  A health service faced with increasing numbers of patients with diabetes may seek to persuade patients to change their lifestyles to reduce the numbers requiring treatment in the future.  Whose problem is that?

If I have an unhealthy lifestyle, it is a problem for me but I won’t necessarily see it that way.  The challenge is how to market the message “your lifestyle is unhealthy and it is in your best interests to do something about it”.

My unhealthy lifestyle is a chronic problem and the challenge is to do something about it before it becomes acute.  Once it becomes acute, I may have an incentive but it may also be too late.  The task is an educational campaign that shows me the immediate value of doing something about my unhealthy lifestyle.

Is your problem preventable?

Even if the problem is worth preventing before it happens, there is still a question whether it is preventable.  The consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle may be preventable, if action leads to changes in my lifestyle now.  Once I develop the acute problem there may be no cure.

So, are you trying to prevent people developing the problem, helping people with the problem resolve it or offering palliative care to those stuck with it?

So, you might offer a service that supports people in demanding roles, so that they can review their work and anticipate likely problems.  You may support people in demanding roles, who have a problem and need help resolving it.  You may support people who were in a demanding role, crashed and burned and now need to rebuild their career.

Is it worth investing to prevent?

People fail.  They make a mess of things all the time.  The challenge is to learn from the experience, pick yourself up and start over.  Without failure we would not encounter experienced people who have learned how to handle failure.

People in challenging positions sometimes think they were set up to fail.  Perhaps a malevolent manager put them there deliberately to fail.  But actually, many people learn from their mistakes.

So, when is it worth investing in prevention?  Obviously where someone’s health is at stake, it may be worth taking precautionary methods.  However, one of the things people who face problems learn is the value of making space to reflect and be aware of the situation they are in.  They may undertake coaching not because they don’t feel competent but because they are competent.

Experienced people know they need help.

Is this a problem that the proposition prevents before it happens, or solves after it happens?

You can see this is an important issue.  If your market is professional people, you may be seeking people who want to prepare themselves for problems through your services.  They are confident they can solve their own problems and so they are not seeking a consultant who can solve problems for them.

If someone has a problem and needs help resolving it, they may have less experience and need help with their approach to problem solving.  It may be they need some specific expertise they can’t find in-house and if that is what you offer, that’s fine.

But let’s assume you are a website designer.  Someone’s website is not bringing in the business they were expecting.  How do you know the problem is with the website?  It could equally be a problem in the customer’s organisation.  If it is, your work on the website will make little difference.

Your ability to dig deeper and seek the really causes of problems is crucial, whatever business you are in.  Find out what the real problem is and be prepared to make a referral if it is something you cannot address.  Solving the immediate problem without addressing the reason for the problem may do your business little good.

Can you remember when you solved a problem but did not address its cause?  What happened?

0 Selling Information Online and Offline

If you are selling information online or offline, remember this: you can’t!  Obviously, most information is already available online.  These days a Google search will almost always result in finding the information you need.

Well, what if I invent something, some new information?  It will take about 5 minutes before it becomes available online!  There are secrets but it is difficult to keep them.  I’m about to join a coaching programme and they will share business secrets on the programme.  From what I’ve seen so far, I already know a lot of these and if any are new, I suspect I’ll be able to find them somewhere online.  So, why am I doing it?

Content Curation

Ah yes, you may think, this programme will have curated the information.  True the coach will have accumulated information from multiple sources.  One big advantage will be finding it all in one place.  It saves me the trouble of seeking it myself.

And of course, it may be the information is online but I’m not aware of it.  I could find it if I knew about it.  But I don’t and so someone else is saving me time and effort.

Furthermore, they will organise the information.  This is important, there are any number of tools for marketing online and in-person and each has some value.  Most of them don’t work and one reason for this is tools in isolation are not effective.  They need to be deployed strategically and most people are not good at strategy.

The point of content curation is to find content, organise it and structure its use.  This website has a blog that accumulates a lot of information in one place and to some degree organises it.  It may be of value to someone who uses it but they need to know what they are doing.

The purpose of accumulating this information is marketing.  To blog or to curate information in other ways, increases credibility.  It shows you know your subject area.  It is essential but in no way sufficient if you’re planning to sell a service.

Structured Experience

geralt / Pixabay

The key to any service is the way you structure your knowledge so that you can sell it as an experience.  I may know many online and offline tools but it is when I experience using them that I learn how to be a practitioner.

It is interesting that many professionals have a coach.  Indeed this could be define a professional; they pay someone to help them think through their work.  This is sometimes called non-directive consultancy.  The point is the consultor is the expert, their coach or consultant helps them think things through, encourages them to try new things, perhaps suggesting appropriate tools.

Every professional carries a metaphorical tool box.  Knowing the tools is one thing, experiencing their use is another.  The challenge is not to carry around a couple of tools you’re brilliant with but to know how to deploy new, untested tools.

You know most things don’t work and whatever you deploy will be a matter of trial and error.  But experiencing the impact of using new tools, discussing them with others and refining practice enables us to experience success.  Success leads to more success, increased confidence and  effectiveness.  This is why the non-directive consultant or coach offers structured experience and not just a load of methods.

Integrate Marketing, Don’t Bolt It On

I remember many years ago, doing a week’s training in Participatory Appraisal.  They said, everyone comes on this course to learn the tools.  They covered them in about an hour.  The rest of the time was learning how to use them properly, experiencing the inner nature of PA.  And this is true of any practice.

Marketing is not a bolt-on to your main business.  You need to learn how to market your business as integral to your business.  You need to find out what you are good at, experience success and work out how to move on to increasing confidence and success.  Successful professionals and business people pay good money for that.

This is why I write a blog and sell coaching.  It is through joining two or more brains together that we experience success.

2 What is Your Market’s Problem?

This is my first post after the summer break and today I’m making a start on the fourth this element of the circuit questionnaire, the Problem.  The thing to remember here is this problem is your market’s problem.  You might have any number of problems but these need not detain us here.

In its earliest drafts this element began with a staccato set of questions. At no point did it ask “What is the Problem?”  If you don’t know what your market’s problem is, how can you understand its nature?

How well do you know your customers?  Do you know them well enough to really understand their problem?  You are seeking to bring together two things here:

Some Examples

The first is far more important than the second when you reach out to people.  This is particularly important for people offering coaching or counselling but it is actually important for almost everything.  Here are few examples:

Hairdresser

“I know what it’s like to have unmanageable hair when you’re going to that crucial interview, meeting an important client, speaking to a group of business people.  I know how important it is to look good and how dreadful it is when something goes wrong with that first impression.”

Optician

“I know what a liability failing eyesight can be, perhaps you first noticed it driving or find you have to sit near the front in seminars.  But you dread having to put in contacts or looking geeky in specs.  We offer a discrete and supportive service for business people so they can carry on working with a new vision!”

Wholefood Shop

“Good wholesome food can be a challenge – you may be wondering, what are the best things to eat, what’s in season, how do I cook it?  We provide a helpful service to our customers.  Our staff are ready and briefed to explain how you can cook our products and their nutritional value.  We know busy people are often unable to devote a lot of time to cooking but a healthy enjoyable diet is worth putting in a little effort.  We’ll show you how to get the most benefit for the smallest investment of time.”

And so you could go on.  I’ve used a market of busy business people as the basic – and you could describe the problem for each of these businesses as your particular market might express it.  Try to show you have experienced the problem, you know the solution and work through the implications of your problem for your particular market.

Naming the Problem

Remember, someone with a problem does not necessarily know what it is.  So, someone who keeps losing their temper might be aware they have a problem but not aware the cause may be stress.  If you ask “Are you stressed?” they would answer “No”.  Ask “Do you keep losing your temper?” and they might get in touch.  You can then explore with them whether the problem is stress or something else.

The questions that follow in the circuit questionnaire, under 4.1, help you get a clearer perspective on your problem and we’ll look at them next time.

Can you describe potential customers who may have a problem but do not know what it is?

0 Negative Side-Effects to Your Offer

Negative side-effects happen where there is a cost, constraint or difficulty associated with your offer.  The thing to remember is negative side-effects are unavoidable but they can be turned to your advantage.

The key to managing negative side-effects is to expect them and so prepare your clients for them.  The question on the Circuit Questionnaire at 3.18 suggests you could use a statement like this:

Now you can get {benefit} without {traditionally associated cost}!

The first thing to note is this is a cost associated with a benefit.  What you’re saying is your offer addresses this traditional associated cost.

So, let’s say you are a website designer.  You could claim a variety of costs would be eliminated:

Use the Value Triangle!

One point to note: you can save time by paying more money or you can save money by spending more time.  You are unlikely to come up with an offer that saves both time and money.  Indeed, I discussed this very issue in my post about the Value Triangle.

Consider Your Prices

If you’re offering to save your customer time, this means you are using your time.  So, you charge more because you have limited time too!  However, you are:

You should charge for the time you save for your customer and not the time it takes you to complete the job.  After all you can do the job quicker because of the time you’ve spent over years learning your trade!

Similarly, the DWY approach has its own advantages.  The customer will understand their site, how it works, etc.  They will establish a routine that helps them keep their site up-to-date.

Help Your Customer Decide

The point is the customer must decide which of the available options to choose.  The important thing is they make an informed decision and understand its implications.

If you have several offers, you should be able to suggest a couple of viable options.  Alternatively, you can sometimes make referrals to providers who can make a better offer.

So, you can say your offer is time-saving and reasonably priced but make the price comparison with other time-saving offers.  A DWY offer is not time-saving per se and so don’t compare it with the price of a DFY offer.

Use the Value Triangle to find out what is important to your customer.  A conversation around how the three factors interact will equip them with a model they can use with any provider.  If they are going to pay more, they can reasonably expect higher quality and faster delivery.  Pay less and expect to sacrifice either quality or speed.

Be aware of other advantages.  A DWY approach sacrifices speed but not quality and it has other advantages, as a learning opportunity for the customer.  A high-speed, low quality fix may be what you need under some circumstances, eg where you are testing a market and a rough and ready site is all you need for the present.

OK, that brings us to the end of “Proposition”, the third element in the Circuit Questionnaire.  I will pick up with the fourth element, “Problem” in a few weeks’ time.

1 Indirect Benefits of Your Offer

An indirect benefit is where a third-party benefits as well as or instead of your client or customer.  There are also incidental benefits your client or customer experiences beyond what you originally planned.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is a deliberate approach to indirect benefits.  You have an offer that will benefit your customers.  If a business partner refers your service to one of their customers, your partner will benefit from what their customer receives from you.  All three parties win from this approach.

A good example of this approach is Utility Warehouse (this is an affiliate link, included to illustrate this post.  Contact me if you are interested).  They offer an attractive package of discounted utility services.  They use referral marketing to sell their packages, which means they engage distributors, who are self-employed.  So, let’s see who wins.

This is an interesting business model and it is worth studying to understand the power of indirect benefits.  When you have a win-win arrangement, it changes the basis of doing business.  Distributors benefit directly from collaboration.  There is an incentive to generosity built into this approach.

That’s true for any form of referral marketing.  The mindset has to be one of generosity and not competition.  This does not guarantee everything boles along swimmingly!  This approach requires a lot of patience and very often the benefits are not immediately clear.  You have to trust other businesses will in the long run act in your interests.

Causes

Of course, causes are examples of where a third-party benefits, often at the expense of the client or customer.  Perhaps we don’t always think of people who make donations as clients or customers, after all they do not usually receive any direct benefit from their contribution.

However, just as businesses value repeat customers, so charities value repeat donors.  This means they need to build a relationship with their donors.  Whist the donor will expect as much of their contribution as possible to help the beneficiaries of the scheme, many will value reports on the effectiveness of the cause and possibly other incentives to continue with their support.

If the donor feels they are part of something, they are more likely to continue with their support.  The same applies to any customer, if they feel as if they are part of something they are more likely to agree to work with you or shop with you.  Maybe it is not obvious how you will do this but it is always worth asking the question.

Other Benefits to the Prospect

It’s always worth asking what benefits your customer or clients receive in addition to their main reason for buying.  Often these positive side effects can be more important than the thing itself.

So, someone might purchase double-glazing to reduce their fuel bills.  Double-glazing also reduces carbon emissions and this side-effect might be of value to the customer.  If they approach you to reduce their fuel bills, there’s no harm in pointing out other benefits.

It is always helpful to listen to your customers and ask how your product or service has benefitted them.  It is not impossible they will experience benefits you never anticipated.  These may be universal enough to add to your marketing copy.

It is worth reviewing possible side-effects as you develop your product or service.  These might accrue to family life, working life or directly to the customer.

The Context of Indirect Benefits

It’s not really possible to review each of these because so much depends upon the nature of the offer.  However, it is worthwhile being aware of the circumstances in which indirect benefits might arise:

Can you think of additional benefits you’ve found for your offer?  Have you used these to support your marketing?

0 From Story to Brand

I’ve written about stories several times and discussed your story as an essential part of your brand.  However, what does this mean in practice?  This post aims to open a discussion about how we can move from story to brand.

What is a Brand?

It makes sense to start with this question because we need to know where we’re going!  The key to understanding Brand is recognition.  Whatever it is about your business or cause that your market recognises, contributes to your Brand.

When we think of Brand we usually think about things like a logo, a by-line, the name of a product or business, colour schemes, etc.  All these things certainly contribute and for larger businesses, they can work very well without the need for much of a story.

For small businesses, including self-employed these may be harder to bring together and use to gain recognition.  It may be easier to use a story.  Why?

Using a Story as Your Brand

If your story is memorable and well-known it is likely to help people recognise who you are and understand your offer.  Let’s say you are a life-coach.  You are likely to be one among many.

Your market is likely not to understand what life coaching is, let alone decide whether they need your services.  So, the aim of any life coach (and this applies equally to most other businesses) is to establish their own credentials at the same time as they explain who their services are for and the benefits of using them to those people.

Vivid images always help and if they can be captured in a logo that is all well and good.  However, stories can generate images in the imagination, so the words you use to describe your business can generate images just as effectively as a logo.

So, perhaps you use a word like “Chrysalis” to name your business.  Can you link your business name to your story?  This does not need to be spelt out but the two can reinforce your image or conflict and so undermine your image.

Very often we name our businesses a long time before we find our story.  This can be problematic if you find a story that doesn’t resonate with your business name.  Everyone’s understanding of what they are doing evolves over the years.  This means managing your brand is likely to be an ongoing challenge.

Two Types of Story

Perhaps there are two types of story.  They can be combined or presented on different occasions.

One type of story focuses on the past and tells how someone experienced a problem and overcame it.  This type of story may appeal to people preoccupied with the same problem.

The other type of story is about someone with a vision, who worked out how to turn it into reality.  The point of this story is not so much to stake a claim for knowing how to turn visions into reality – as to establish the power of a vision to effect change.  Many people with a vision do not believe it is for them to make it real.

Experiment with different ways of telling your story and try to work out what type of story it is.  (There are certainly more than two types.)

If you already have an image associated with your business, perhaps you will begin to see how it resonates with your story.  Or perhaps it doesn’t.

If you have successfully turned your story into a brand, how did you do it?

0 The Longevity of Your Promotion

You have an offer and one way to sell it is through a promotion, a marketing plan for your offer.  The thing you promote is your proposition, the rationale behind your offer. The longevity of your promotion is one thing to consider.

So, if you have a shop front, you could display a sign offering a discount on one of your offers.  The discount is likely to be more effective if it is for a short period:  “For one week only …”  “Offer ends on Saturday …”

If you are going to do it that way, it is usually a good idea to have a reason for the promotion that you can make public, scarcity or urgency, for example.

Where your offer is long-term, perhaps if it is the main thing you sell, then you need a long-term promotion.

So, let’s take a look at short and long-term promotions:

Short-Term Promotions

The main thing to remember is plan about how you are going to combine short-term and long-term promotions.  A product launch for a new offer can pave the way for a long-term promotion.  Once people find you through a short-term promotion, they may be interested to explore what else you offer.

How have you organised your offers, to encourage people to explore everything you offer?

0 On Being Stuck

We’ve all been stuck!  We’ve tried everything and nothing works.  Being stuck, we can’t get traction or make progress despite all our efforts.  What can possibly be done?

Being stuck is a brilliant place to be!  Once you understand why this is, you shall never think about it in the same way again.  If you have tried everything, then any solution you find has to be something new.  To be stuck is to be on the verge of a breakthrough, of an innovative solution.  If you’re not stuck, you need nothing new.

Small business owners often experience being stuck with an offer they can’t sell.  They have a good product or service but can’t find the pulse of their market.

Your Attitude

Generally it is important to be patient and live with the problem for a while.  Have confidence your subconscious is working on the problem.  At some point you will make a breakthrough, see things differently and be able to move on.

It can be really helpful to take a break from the problem.  The old advice to “sleep on it” has some value.  Sometimes all you need is to take a break.  A good long walk might shift the log jam and help you see the problem from a new angle.

Discussing the problem with someone else can work.  The person you choose does not have to be an expert, the point is not that they will come up with the solution.  The point is you will perhaps see things in a new light, as you describe the problem.  It does help if the person you choose can ask intelligent questions.  They might inadvertently stumble upon a new way of viewing the problem.  And someone who does understand the problem may be able to point out some unexplored options.

A coach or mentor can help you think things through.  A non-directive consultant will know lots of ways to help you address the roadblock.

Some Things to Try

So, you’re on your own or you have a team and you’re all stuck.  The chances are you are taking something for granted.  So, consider the following:

1. Do you really understand the problem?  It may be worth going back over the evidence, reviewing the research or even collecting new evidence.  Have you identified your market and asked them for their views?
2. Are you making assumptions about the solution?  Many businesses make a breakthrough when they understand the goal of marketing is not always sales.  It can be education, helping people understand their problem.  If you’re simply asking how to increase sales, perhaps you are asking the wrong question.  Trying a different goal may help you find your way forward by another route.
3. Problems have contexts.  Maybe the approaches you use work better in another context.  It is certainly true that solutions that work in one city or estate, don’t necessarily work elsewhere and sometimes it’s hard to understand why.  If your chosen approach works elsewhere, is there something significant in your context you are not taking into account.
4. Have you implemented your solutions properly?  If you trying something complex, have you followed the instructions?  There is ample time to attempt variations once you understand the basic method.
5. Are you blaming other people?  It is sometimes tempting to assume there is a plot against you.  Or a group of people have some unfair advantage.  Usually this is not so but even if it is so, why are you competing with them?
6. If all else fails, try lateral thinking!  Actually, these approaches are examples of lateral thinking.  It simply means approaching the problem from a different angle.  You can try something like picking a word at random from a dictionary, brainstorm around it and then see if anything resonates with your problem.  If the problem is on your mind, perhaps your subconscious will find a solution this way.

Trust Your Subconscious

The skill is learning to listen to your subconscious and not stamping on an idea that at first may seem irrelevant or irreverent.  Listen to what your own mind is saying and you’ll often find it is inviting you to look at things in a very different light.

What approaches do you use to solve intractable problems?