Starter marriage? Can I shake my head? It doesn’t exactly define commitment to me. It’s a play on words, apparently, from the term “starter home.”

Fortunately, from what I gather, it isn’t the intention of the parties involved to go into a “starter marriage,” they actually do intend on the life-long commitment marriage.

What would Brian Tracy do? Here’s a business coaching conundrum for you…

I was reading an article on BusinessWeek.com by Hugo Miller this morning, about BlackBerry scrambling to make everybody happy.

The big banks on Wall Street, the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, have adopted the BlackBerry because they like its built-in securities.

That’s fabulous for Research In Motion (RIM) – RIM has sailed along very successfully since the release of their first smartphones in the late 1990s. It’s that success has led them to success outside of North America.

BlackBerry sales outside of North America have increased 37% in the last year, BUT! Now they’re stumbling on this security issue: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, India and possibly China, want access to messages being sent by BlackBerry users – they are concerned that terrorists will take advantage of its fabulous encryption system to plan attacks. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, back in North America, their big customers here on the homeland continent are worried about losing that same powerful security system.

The business coaching challenge here is: How do they please both customers at once? Or, do they make a choice to please only one customer?

According to Brian Tracy, “The customer is king.”

Right now, BlackBerry has 46 million users internationally.

If they “fix” their security to allow government access to messaging, they keep themselves in the huge potential markets of India and China.

With a population of 1.3 billion in China and close to 1.2 billion in India, compared to a combined U.S., Mexico and Canada population of 460 million, which potential market should they be trying to please? Which customer is king?

(From what I’ve been told, you can go to the tiniest village in China or India and still have cell access.)

BUT! Isn’t part of the reason for BlackBerry’s success because of their built-in security?

If I were RIM’s Business Coach, I would dig through my Brian Tracy Toolbox and ask them these questions:

1. What business are you in?
2. What is the mission of your company? What do you want to achieve/avoid/ or preserve?
3. How do you want your customers to talk about RIM?
4. Who is your perfect customer?
5. What are your customer’s values?
6. Which of your products or services give you the highest profit?
7. Which products, services and markets should your company abandon/eliminate in order to create high value and profit elsewhere?
8. What makes BlackBerry different from the competition? What is your area of excellence?
9. What type of customers use a Blackberry?
10. Which customers should you phase out/abandon because they aren’t worth the time or energy to satisfy?

It would be great to hear what the FocalPoint Business Coaching Team has to say about this – or any other business coaches for that matter. What would you do if you were the RIM Business Coach?