The Parachute Problem: How to Find the Urgent Problem Clients Pay For

Imagine you are falling out of a plane. Someone falls past you holding a parachute and offers to sell it to you for £1m.

You do not negotiate. You do not ask for a discount. You do not say "this looks great, can you send me a proposal and I'll come back to you Monday."

You buy the parachute.

You do not buy it because it is a good product, or because the sales copy was clever. You buy it because the problem has a deadline and there is no alternative. That is a parachute problem, and most businesses are not selling one.

What is a parachute problem?

A parachute problem is a problem your client needs solved right now, with a deadline attached and a real cost if it is not fixed.

The opposite is a fluffy problem. Nice to fix. Should probably fix. Would be better if. Nobody is falling.

Signs you are selling a fluffy problem

A fluffy problem produces a very specific set of symptoms.

• "This sounds great, send me over a proposal", and then nothing
• Prospects who compare you to three other people before deciding on none of you
• Having to explain why the problem matters before you can explain what you do
• Deals that do not die to a competitor. They die to nothing at all

Why more marketing does not fix it

This is where founders go wrong. They look at those symptoms and blame the sales call. Or the pricing. Or the content. Or the funnel. So they go and do more of all four.

But you cannot add urgency in the copy. You can only find it in the client.

You probably already sell to someone with a parachute problem

Most people already sell to someone with an urgent problem. They just describe it from far too high up.

"I help coaches get more clients" is a fluffy problem.

"You've got six weeks of runway and the one referral source that fed you for three years has gone quiet" is a parachute.

Same person. Same service. Same price. One of those gets a proposal request. The other gets a card on the table.

People only ever buy three things: health, wealth or relationships. And they only buy urgently when one of the three is actively on fire.

The 99 problems exercise

Get a pen and a piece of paper. Not a doc, and definitely not AI.

1. Write down 99 problems your ideal client has right now.
2. Expect the first 20 or 30 to come easily. They will be the ones you have read on LinkedIn a hundred times.
3. Keep going. Somewhere around 40 you run out of borrowed answers and have to remember actual conversations with actual people, and the things they said on a call that you did not write down at the time.
4. Sort the list with one rule: if the problem does not have a deadline attached to it, it is not one.

"I want to grow my business" has no deadline. "I have to replace £8k of monthly revenue before Christmas" does.

The exercise takes about an hour, and it will change what you say on every call for the next year. The parachute has always been in the specifics.

Make sure the person with the problem can pay

An urgent problem is only half of a good offer. The person who has it also needs the means to fix it.

We have worked with fitness coaches who loved helping people in their late teens get back into training. Even £50 a month is a hard sale to that person. An entrepreneur in their 30s who understands what being fitter is worth will pay hundreds a month for the same skill.

When you sort your list of 99, mark who has each problem as well as how urgent it is.

Urgency is not enough without belief

Even with a parachute problem, people only buy once they believe three things.

1. Their current path does not work. The way they are trying to solve the problem now will not get them where they want to go.
2. There is a better way. You have shown them an approach that makes sense and is easier, faster or more reliable than what they are doing.
3. Your solution delivers that better way. Your service is the logical vehicle for it.

Most founders skip straight to the third. They present the programme and the guarantee while the prospect still believes the old way will work if they try harder.

Marketing that only names the pain, such as "Struggling to get leads?", attracts people who know they have a problem. It does not attract people who are ready to invest in fixing it.

A three-question check

Draw a simple funnel and answer these.

1. What does my market currently believe about their problem and how to solve it?
2. What do I need them to believe instead?
3. How am I walking them through that shift in my content, ads, emails and sales calls?

If you cannot answer those clearly, you are probably working on tactics such as cheaper ads and better landing pages when the gap is in what your prospects believe. The numbers matter, but they are downstream of beliefs.

Frequently asked questions

What is a parachute problem?

A parachute problem is a problem your client needs solved right now, with a deadline attached and a real cost if it is not fixed. The name comes from the idea that someone falling out of a plane would pay almost anything for a parachute.

How do you know if your offer solves an urgent problem?

Check whether the problem has a deadline. If prospects ask for a proposal and go quiet, compare you with several others and choose nobody, or need the problem explained to them, you are selling a problem that is nice to fix and not urgent.

How do you find your client's most urgent problem?

Write down 99 problems your ideal client has right now, by hand and without AI. The first 20 to 30 are the obvious ones. The useful answers come after about 40, when you have to recall real conversations. Keep only the problems with a deadline attached.

Keep reading

• How to niche down your coaching or consulting business
• How to price a coaching offer: value stacking explained
• How to get to your first £10k month as a coach or consultant

Get the next one in your inbox

Every Sunday the Recognized Newsletter covers what is working in the business right now, what our clients are doing and what guests on the Healthy Entrepreneur Podcast recommend. It is free. Join the newsletter here.

If you are an expert doing £10k to £30k a month and want help building this, see how we work with clients.