Customer Pains, Gains and Jobs

What Are Customer Pain Points?

A pain point is a specific problem that prospective customers of your business are Pain points are problems that prospective customers of your business are having. Customer pain points are not the same as your prospective customers. Not all prospects will be aware of the pain point they are experiencing, which can make marketing to them difficult as you have to convince them that your product or service will solve it. Pain points can be thought of as simple problems, but they are often grouped into other categories.

Financial Pain Points: Your prospects are spending too much money on their current provider/solution/products and want to reduce their spend

Productivity Pain Points: Your prospects are wasting too much time using their current provider/solution/products or want to use their time more efficiently

Process Pain Points: Your prospects want to improve internal processes, such as assigning leads to sales reps or nurturing lower-priority leads

Support Pain Points: Your prospects aren’t receiving the support they need at critical stages of the customer journey or sales process

Another way to llo at customers needs when it comes to buying stuff: functional, social and emotional. Functional needs relate to the product or service itself. Do you make a great toaster? Then your toaster is an example of a functional need. Do you own a great shoe-store? Then your shoes are an example of a functional need. Or is the interaction with your sales team? Then it turns into a social need. Those that give people a reason to interact with each other. Do you sell a great family vacation to a group of people who love each other? Then your product or service is providing a social need. An emotional need is one that gives people a reason to connect with each other, a cause and with your brand.

Customers don’t buy products, they buy solutions. And often, what is troubling a customer isn’t what the customer doesn’t get, but rather, what the customer has to do. For example, if someone needs to lose weight, it’s not the calories or the carbs that are causing them distress; it’s the exercise they have to do. Or, if someone needs to get a better job, it’s not the money that is causing them pain; it’s the risk of having their current job taken away.

Canvassing the value proposition canvas will help you identify which job your prospect is trying to accomplish with the purchase of your product or service. Sometimes this will be a simple as “The Functional Job” or “The Social Job”. But often it’s much more complex. You may find your prospect is trying to accomplish multiple jobs at the same time. In this case, you may have to do some research and thinking to figure out what his primary goals are. Is it to lose weight? To get rich? To have beautiful kids? To keep his house clean? Whatever his primary goal is, you must make it your duty to help him achieve that goal. If you do that, you will have a good chance of selling your product or service. If you don’t… you will almost certainly fail.

Jobs are what people try to do. What they want to get done. What they are trying to achieve. What they are looking for.

When someone is ordering a book from you or buying a product from you, they are making a choice. And their choice is not based on logic. No. It is emotional. They want to buy the book or product because it makes them feel important, loved, powerful, intelligent and so on. That’s why “wowing” them with facts isn’t the way to go. Instead, go to the core emotional reasons they have for wanting what you have to sell.

– How do you do that? Well, one very simple way is by asking your customers and prospects.

Canvas: What do my customers value most?

The questions here are designed to get you thinking about the answers, not to tell you the answers.