Tools Don't Solve Problems. Strategy Does.

Our society has an unhealthy obsession with tools.

Whenever someone has a problem, they immediately try to find a tool to solve it.

I’m tired of being asked the question: “what’s the best tool for _____?”

For example, common questions I get asked:

“What’s the best marketing stack for my company?”

“What’s the best tool for content promotion?”

“What’s the best tool for blog conversions?”

If you’re asking these types of questions, you’re going about your job in the wrong way.

Tools Don’t Solve Problems, They Optimize Processes

If you read half of the blog posts about tools out there, you’d be led to believe that you can pay $x/mo for a software product and it will magically solve your problem with (insert job function here).

But, tools don’t solve problems. They optimize processes.

Tools bring speed, organization or improvement to something that already works, but they’re not going to help you solve a problem.

For example:

If I was already driving a ton of traffic and leads from content marketing, and I needed a process improvement for tracking, nurturing, and routing leads to a sales team, then I might invest in marketing automation. Or I might just use something like Zapier of Ifttt to push data from one place to another.

But if I wasn’t driving inbound traffic, leads, and had no strategy, buying Hubspot, Marketo, or Pardot wouldn’t improve my inbound/content marketing program.

People invest in tools when they’re looking for a simple fix, or when they’re looking to take the easy way out.

Then, when tools don’t work, people are confused why the tools they’re invested in aren’t driving results (“when they seem to be working for others?”).

Tools don’t drive results, strategy does.

Strategy is what solves problems

Many people have forgotten that tools don’t solve problems. Strategy does.

The problem with strategy is that it takes years of hard work and investment to learn.

For example:

If I wanted to learn how to become better at sales, I might enlist the help of a mentor, take a course, practice selling, start reading, and ultimately test things (and likely fail at them) until I succeed.

Honing a new skill takes time and effort.

Software has made people lazy.

People think if something isn’t working, they can go buy a sales tool and it’s going to improve their chances of succeeding by 1000%.

Why?

Because it’s a lot easier to blame something not working on a shitty tool you purchased than it is to admit you took the wrong approach or you’re just plain not good at something.

The thing is, that if you don’t get better at strategy, you won’t get better at your job.

Tools won’t make you better at your job. Strategy will.

Stop wasting money on tools. Start investing in strategy.

Seriously, take a look at all of the tools you’re invested in.

How many of them improve a process?

How many of them improve the speed at which you can do something?

How many of them help you organize information in a better way than you could do manually?

There’s a lot of shitty tools out there that you’re probably paying for, and that aren’t moving the needle for you, or for your business.

So I challenge you to take a look at all of the software you’re paying for, that you think will (replace x function) or (improve x function)… and think long and hard about whether those tools actually add value to your life, or your business.

If they don’t, cancel them.

Then, take the money that you saved from those tools, and start investing it into improving your craft.