If you’re in sales, or any business for that matter, your head should hurt more often than it does.  You should like the feeling of your head hurting.  It’s a good feeling.  It means you’re thinking.

Sales and business is about solving problems. It’s not about doing tasks.   Lot’s of people can do tasks.  Solving problems is how things move forward.  To solve problems and grow you have to think.

Customers need help fixing problems and as a sales person that’s your job.   They need ideas.  Ideas come when we make our head hurt.  How much time do you spend thinking about your customers business?  How much time do you think about alternative uses of your companies products?   How much time do you spend thinking about where the market is going?   How much time do you spend thinking?

We all spend a lot of time doing.   We’ve got doing down pat.  Doing is easy.  It’s quantifiable.  Doing says; “Hey check me out, I’m working.”  But doing is only as good as the thinking behind it. Some companies do the thinking for people and just tell them to do.   That’s not going to work much longer and it doesn’t work for leaders or sales people.  Most of us are good at doing and measure ourselves or what we’ve done.   Getting good a thinking and solving problems before we do is where the win is.

My friend Seth Levine of Foundry Group said something to me once that stuck.  We were talking about a challenge I was facing and he said; “You need to solve for that.”   That one statement said it all.   Solving problems is a success driver. Problems aren’t always bad.  Problems are spots in time which require a decision.  The decisions we make, how we chose to solve the problem sets a course — a course that get’s us closer or further away from our objectives.

In sales, business, start-ups, or life, if you’re doing them right, your head should hurt.  It means your thinking and that’s exactly what you should be doing.

Go make your head hurt, it solves problems.