Challenge Your Assumptions

Are you feeling stuck because you’ve tried “everything” and it seems that you have high walls all around you. Challenge your assumptions! Here are five examples with their matching counter-strategies.

Customers will never pay for support/success

Larger customers will gladly pay for higher quality, service guarantees, and additional services. Validate the requirements and pricing with a small pilot. You will be surprised!

The Product team will not help except for escalations

The Product team wants to make rational choices for new releases and products. Build business cases, backed by appropriate date, to justify prioritizing bug fixes and new features.

We are stuck with suboptimal tools

Your “suboptimal” tool may actually be a great tool, badly implemented. A small investment may suffice to transform the experience. Also, look into streamlining the underlying processes before blaming the tools.

Customers expect full-fledged, personal service

Customers appreciate personal service, but they mostly want information and answers. Automation and self-service, if properly thought-out, are used and even loved by customers–leaving you more resources to provide a personal touch when needed.

Turnover is always high for individual contributors

Try (1) giving team members as much latitude as possible in how they do their job (2) offering clear promotion guidelines (3) taking grassroots suggestions seriously and (4) weeding out weak contributors.

Did you challenge an assumption and make a breakthrough? Tell us about it in a comment.