Every problem you face will always present you with at least 3 obstacles.

To be able to overcome the problem you have to identify the 3 chief obstacles and solve them, otherwise you won’t be able to fully remove the problem from your path.

Usually we just solve 1 or 2 obstacles, since they are the obvious parts, but we tend to miss the less obvious parts, which stops us from completely removing the problem from our path.

It was a tough lesson

I learned this lesson the hard way.

I was working with a new employee at the company, she wasn’t having any progress on her sales and we had run into a wall on what to do about it.

We kept working on trying to find her more leads and improve her ability to ask for the order, since they were the obvious problems we had.

The problem was that it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t working.

We sat down and identified all the problems she had, it turned out that she a third problem we hadn’t thought about before.

She had these 3 problems

1. Finding leads

2. Confidence in her body language

3. Asking for the order

As you can see we identified the three problems and then ranked them in order of importance. The order follows the progress her sales do, first leads, then building a report ending with asking for the order.

We started on number 1

Since leads were the largest obstacle we sat down for 1 hour and discussed different solutions. I went through several different techniques with her and we looked for leads together.

After 2 hours of hard work we had filled her pipeline and she felt confident that she could keep it stocked.

We solved number 2 and then the third

Once she has leads we could start working on her confidence in her phone calls and once she had done that she got a lot more opportunities to ask for the order.

Quickly she started making sales and today she is one of the best employees I have.

Identify and prioritize

Start by identifying the 3 key obstacles and prioritize the list in the order of importance and what needs to be done first. By doing this you will quickly get a good overview of your problem and what you need to do in order to solve it.

Start with the most important

Once you know what needs to be done, start with the most important task and make sure to completely solve it. Then move on to the second and so on.

This way your problems will start to quickly dissipate and you can continue with your development.

The importance of finding all three

By identifying all three obstacles you make sure you can focus on all the most important tasks and can make a smart prioritization. Without it you do not know if you are focusing on the right things and you will move slower towards your success.

Conclusion

To every problem focus on your 3 most important obstacles and try to find solutions. That way you will quickly move towards your goals and be able to solve anything that comes your way.