

Is Your Product A Vitamin Or A Painkiller? - mindcrime
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230736

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mindcrime
I hear this analogy used all the time, with the implication being that you
_must_ sell a "painkiller" to be successful. But the more I think about it,
the less convinced I am. I mean, ok, analogies are only analogies, but "in
real life" guess what... a TON of money is made selling "vitamins" and
"nutritional supplements". I got bored once and looked up some data on this
point, and the numbers were pretty staggering.

The other issue I have with it is this: Talking about "pain" is talking about
something that exists NOW and is, presumably, rooted in something that
happened BEFORE. That is, "I stubbed my toe THEN, so NOW my foot hurts, give
me ibuprofen". This means that selling painkillers is inherently backwards
looking, rather than looking forward and looking to opportunities.

"Here kid, use this protein shake and you'll get buff and then you can pick up
all the hot girls at the beach this summer". That's forward looking, that's
selling a "vitamin" as opposed to a "painkiller", and for a lot of kids, it's
a pretty compelling message.

Is it really necessary to focus on selling painkillers? I don't think the
answer is as clear-cut as some people want to make it out to be.

~~~
xivzgrev
To be fair, in your kid example, the kid IS feeling a pain NOW: low
confidence, and muscles will help him build that.

I think anything forward looking is seeking to solve: 1) things that are
painful now but current execution on technology isn't optimized. Either you
combine existing technology in new ways or develop new technology. 2) things
that will be painful in future. For example, we're building drones to help
with the pain and cost of shipping physical goods. Someone is going to develop
software to manage those drones, someone is going to develop expertise in
drone laws, etc. All pains that don't exist today because drones aren't
widespread enough yet.

~~~
mindcrime
_To be fair, in your kid example, the kid IS feeling a pain NOW: low
confidence, and muscles will help him build that._

Well, yeah, to some degree you can usually (always?) fiddle with definitions
and find a way to position a "vitamin" as "painkiller". That's actually an
important point in it's own right. If nothing else, it illustrates that the
vitamin/painkiller dichotomy might not be intrinsic, and may be mostly about
messaging / positioning.

The book _Mastering The Complex Sale_ by Jeff Thull has an interesting little
tidbit there about some processing room anti-corrosion stuff made by, IIRC,
Shell. There was some sample dialogue about the stuff to illustrate this
point:

Person A: What's the business value of the anti-corrosion stuff?

Salesman: Business value? Well, it doesn't generate revenue or cut costs. I
don't know how you'd talk about it's business value.

Person A: What happens if a refinery doesn't use this stuff?

Salesman: Well, corrosion builds up and will eventually cause a leak that
could result in a fire or an explosion.

Point-of-view counts for a lot.

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codingdave
This analogy seems 100% backwards to me. Maybe because I have lived with
chronic pain for enough years to really understand these materials...

Painkillers mask deeper problems, letting you continue to get by without
fixing root causes. In and of themselves, they do nothing for your health. On
the contrary, they make you less sharp and restrict your capabilities.

Vitamins are either completely redundant in your system, and thereby useless,
or they fill in crucial gaps that let everything else work as designed. They
are not needed by everybody, but if you have ever truly experienced a chronic
vitamin deficiency, then fixed it, you will never again think they are a "nice
to have".

I know that this is just an analogy being used to make a point. But a more
true analogy could make an even better point - you don't need to sell to
everyone... just make sure you truly solve a serious problem for a specific
audience.

~~~
thwarted
_[painkillers] make you less sharp and restrict your capabilities_

From one perspective, that's what you get when you outsource something to
another that is providing the "painkiller" product or service. You gain
agility in general because you don't need to concentrate on something that
isn't your core competency (pain management). It does make you less sharp
because you don't need to be, and thus won't be, an expert in providing that
service for yourself. And it restricts your capabilities because you're tied
to whatever limitations the painkiller provider feels like operating under or
exposing you to.

Sometimes the "serious problem" is something that "causes pain", and removal
of the pain may be the solution. Agreed, though, that it's better to actually
remove the cause of the pain (and thus the pain) rather than just mask the
symptoms.

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moheeb
This article was a waste of electrons.

 _" Vitamins are "nice to have," but not "need to have." "_ I'd like for the
author to go for several months without Vitamin C.

~~~
georgemcbay
Presumably he meant vitamin supplements as opposed to any/all vitamins
ingested through food/drink, though that assumption only makes the analogy
marginally better since most contemporary research puts vitamin supplements
somewhere on a range between useless and actively harmful.

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xivzgrev
"So what do you do, Mr. Levie? You help businesses sync files locally across
computers for quicker access? Sounds like a feature Sharepoint will add to its
roadmap, removing the need for your business."

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alexshye
Nir Eyal behavior design work includes an interesting thought on this: apps
that are vitamins can become painkillers.

If you haven't gone through his slide deck, I'd highly recommend it. He goes
through the vitamin/painkiller part pretty early in the slide deck.

[http://www.slideshare.net/nireyal/hooked-
model](http://www.slideshare.net/nireyal/hooked-model)

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hojoff79
One underlying assumption the author seems to be making here is that he is
discussing B2B businesses rather than B2C. I actually think this message is
much more applicable in the B2B space than the B2C (where I think it is wholly
wrong).

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Maro
Facebook wasn't painkiller.

~~~
rogerdickey
for some people, not knowing what their friends/ex are up to is painful

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lowglow
Hm. What do you get when your product is both a painkiller and vitamin?

