Stop Chasing Job Orders, Start Framing Problems

Since forever, staffing sales professionals have been trained to seek out job orders.

Most call hiring managers and ask: 

• “Do you have any needs?”
• “Can I send you some resumes?”
• “What projects are you working on?”

That is the job, but here is the harsh truth

This is not selling. 

In a difficult market with economic uncertainty where job orders are quickly drying up, asking these questions doesn’t get the job done.

Today I’m going to show you how to find and frame a problem as a growing threat that ties directly to an executive KPI that creates urgency and aligns multiple stakeholders around the need to take action.

Here is why this is important.

• If there is no problem to be solved, there is no sale to be made
• If all impacted stakeholders don't weigh in, they won't buy in
• If you can't frame a problem, you can't create urgency

What Happens in a Company Before a Job Order Becomes a Job Order?

A job order doesn’t start with HR writing a job description.

A job order doesn’t start with the approval from procurement or the CFO.

All job orders (consulting and FTE hires) are born out of a problem or a goal. 

For example:

• A project is falling behind.
• A product launch is at risk.
• A key system is failing.
• A strategic initiative is losing momentum.
  
  

At first, the business tries to solve the problem internally.

They shift priorities, reassign staff, stretch team bandwidth, extend timelines or pivot in a new direction.  Only after those options fail—and the cost of doing nothing becomes so high—do they consider investing in an external solution (consultants, FTE, software, etc). 

Even if they determine they have to buy a solution to solve a problem they still put that purchase off until it becomes absolutely necessary. They do this not because they’re procrastinating, but because it is the reality of running a business. 

They ask themselves, of all of the  initiatives we need to act on, which are the most important and top priority right now? While all businesses have unlimited opportunity for improving operations, all businesses also have limited resources from which to pull from, and an obligation to go through a valuation and prioritization process.

They develop a list of projects and initiatives and put them through a process of valuation and prioritization.  The process may be formal or informal.  Factors that influence prioritization may include:

• The cost of the problem going unresolved (the cost of inaction)
• Return on investment of time, money and other resources
• Availability of resources
• Time to value
• Competitive threats
• Market opportunities
• Stated objectives or promises to various stakeholders

A line has to be drawn, above which are projects that can be approved, staffed and funded, below which are those that cannot be approved.

This is how job orders are born.

Most likely, you and your sales team are never in the room for these conversations.  

You should be.  And I’m going to teach you how.

Your Job Isn’t to Find a Job Order. Your Job is to Find & Frame a Problem.

“Pain” can be defined as a problem, critical business issue, technical issue or potential missed opportunity. If a person or a company doesn’t have pain, why should they change or leave the status quo?  Pain is what gives people a reason for change. Pain causes people to take action, to change a negative situation.

When prospecting, you will encounter two types of customers. 

Buyers who are not actively seeking a solution and not actively trying to resolve an issue.  A problem exists (with their team, product or project), but the buyer is not yet aware of it, either because they’re uniformed or they have rationalized that a solution doesn’t exist.

Uninformed buyers simply don’t know the problem exists — either because it hasn’t surfaced yet, or they lack visibility into the root cause or consequences. 

Rationalization means they are aware of the problem but they are not aware a solution exists. They may have failed at previous attempts to solve the problem and given up on a solution.

Your job with these buyers is to help them become aware of, understand and contextualize their problems including the cost of the problem going unresolved.

This is selling. 

You will also encounter buyers who are open and willing to discuss their problems, challenges, or dissatisfaction but they don’t know how to solve them.   An example of this is a leader dealing with technical debt. Every technology leader knows that technical debt leads to more bugs and product defects, higher maintenance costs, and delayed time-to-market with new products and features, but they’re sitting on the sidelines. 

Why?

They don’t have a clear vision of what to do or how to get started.

Your job is to fully diagnose the problem, its impact, and co-create a vision of a solution with the buyer.

This is selling.

How to Frame a Problem 

You might uncover a pain point—like a legacy system that frustrates end users—but that’s not enough.  You need to go deeper and frame it as a high-cost, high-priority threat that execs care about—something that gets worse the longer it’s ignored.

Framing a problem means to define it clearly, shape how it's perceived, and position it in a way that creates urgency and alignment across multiple stakeholders.

Framing a problem is about helping the customer see:

• What’s really at stake
• Why it’s happening
• Why it matters now
• What happens if they do nothing

Frame the problem by writing a problem statement.  A problem statement is a clear, concise description of an issue that needs to be addressed or resolved. In business contexts, it's used to articulate what the customer is struggling with, why it matters, and what’s at stake if it doesn’t get solved.  Problem statements serve a variety of important purposes across different departments—especially in sales, consulting, product development, project management, and strategic planning.

Find a Problem

Instead of trying to find pre-defined, budget approved job orders, your job is to find a problem that’s already costing the business time, money, or momentum.

• Look for pain that’s already happening: missed financial targets, manual workarounds, technical debt, low adoption/resistance to change, poor morale, burnout.
  
  
• Ask questions that reveal root causes, not surface complaints.
  
  
• Look for signs of status quo fatigue—things the team is tolerating but shouldn't have to.
  
  
• Test if it's a real problem by asking: “What happens if they do nothing?”

Frame the problem as a growing threat—not just a pain point, but a risk to a priority that executives are investing in.  Show that staying the course is more costly than taking action.

• Tie the problem to an executive-level priority, metric or KPI—not just soft issues.
• Use loss aversion: People act faster to avoid loss than to gain benefits.
• Frame the consequences like this:
  
  
  • “Every [timeframe], [group] experiences [pain], costing us [$ amount].”
    
    
  • “If it’s not fixed by [timeline], [impact will worsen by X%].”
    
    
• Make the problem feel like it’s getting worse over time, not just sitting still.

Align the buying team around that framing by writing a clear, compelling problem statement—one that gets validated by multiple stakeholders, highlighting the consequences of inaction, and ties directly to executive-level metrics.

• Interview multiple people affected by the problem. Get their point of view.
• Write a short, clear problem statement and share it back with them:
  
  “Despite trying [X], we still can’t [achieve Y] because of [Z].”
  
    Ask each stakeholder: “Does this reflect your perspective?”
  
  
• Gather agreement from at least 3 stakeholders that this problem matters and must be addressed.
  
  

If you’re still waiting for prospects to hand you job orders, good luck! 

The best salespeople create job orders. They do it by helping them recognize and frame the problems worth solving and aligning their teams toward a solution. That’s how real value is created—and where real influence begins.