Learn Customer Pain Points

Spending time on prospects who dont buy affects your:

Sales
Productivity
Budget
Team

Ideally you want to spend time with prospects who:

Need your help
Want your help
Want you to solve their problems

You need prospects with business needs more than their authority and money.

Because prospects without business pains, don’t have business needs and you won’t make a sale.

So, salespeople need to ask effective sales questions to quickly find their business pains.

Keep reading to find out how.

What’s a pain point?

Pain points are product or service problems prospects have causing issues to their customers and businesses.

Or simply a business need that hasn’t been satisfied yet.

All types of customers have pain points, individually or on a large scale for companies.

Pain Point Examples

The following are examples of typical pain points:

Services customers need don’t match their budget: Financial limits stop customers working efficiently so they search for cost-effective alternatives
Too many steps in business strategies: Long processes take time, cost money and need to be reduced by businesses
Unclear communication between departments: Teams need to communicate information better to reduce errors

These situations cause pain points or slow productivity so first address these pains by finding and eliminating them.

Customer Pain Points

Listen to your customers about:

Customer service complaints
Product or service dissatisfaction
Innovation ideas

And the best way to find and solve customer’s pain points is to listen to hear what they have to say.

Because customers satisfaction is a priority for any business so customers come first, whether they purchase:

An end product
A service to run their operations

Business Pain Points

Business pain points are problems in an organisation that needs a solution.

Real business problems are important because they involve a budget and are discussed at the board level.

These pain points affect the bottom line and must be solved so the organisation can run successfully.

Because they stop a company from functioning properly so therefore are a priority.

Examples of Business Pain Points

You’ve found business pain points if prospects are facing employee dissatisfaction and retention issues that affect:

Productivity and hiring
Customer churn impacting revenue
Lack of leads making it impossible to hit revenue goals

These are what salespeople look for first because it starts prospects on a buying journey and is the urgency behind finding a solution.

The most common types of business pain points prospects might encounter include:

Positioning

It’s easier for companies to set business acquisition goals than it is to achieve them.

Some businesses understand what’s holding their marketing and positioning back, others think they do.

So, you will hear prospects with positioning pains say:

Nobody knows who their company is
Their competitors are outspending them
Their market is changing and leaving them behind
They haven’t considered digital marketing, so they’re behind
Their competitor have more green space than they do on most channels

Acquisition closely translated to revenue do finding positioning pain and solving them proves your value.

Financial

Money in business causes a lot of business pains because they lack it and need more to solve it.

All companies know the benefits of improving their finances.

So, you will hear the following for financial pain points that need solutions:

They’re not selling enough to keep things running
Their revenue is up but profits are down
They don’t have enough visibility to know if they’re making good financial decisions
They’re overpaying for equipment and tools but don’t know what to cut
They have sign ups but they bounce

Your product or service could help businesses reduce spending or manage their cash flow better.

People

People in every business are part of the expenses and assets.

People problems can cause problems in other parts of the business like:

Employee morale being low
Losing best employees to higher-paying positions somewhere else
Lack of diversity leading to lack of innovation
Not being able to trust middle managers to train and motivate
The company culture not aligning with what they declared

Helps organisations manage, rewards or delight employees and take the pressure off stakeholders.

Process

People’s problems lead to operational problems or vice versa.

Prospects know the best way to get repeated success is with repeated processes.

But how? When facing challenges like:

Hiring processes struggling to find highly qualified candidates
High customer churn because the service department can’t keep up
Having no system in place to qualify leads
Inconsistencies in workflow, leading to disorganisation and varying performance
Current software being outdated but transitioning being hard

After finding process pain points, ask prospects to picture a smooth running company, department or system and the difference it would make.

Productivity

Managers remove frictions so the team can get things done, which improves productivity and profits.

Because it’s easy to focus too much on business goals, overlooking inefficiencies that waste time.

Productivity pain points you will tend to hear from business include:

They keep missing client deadlines
They spend way too much time in meetings
Their administrative work is out of control
Quality issues with products is causing recalls and/or customer churn
Employees aren’t supported enough to complete assigned tasks

If the company and its employees are working efficiently and effectively, position your solution as a time, money and stress saver.

Small Business

Small business pain points can stop operations if left unsolved.

Asking small business questions like addressing the numerous tasks small teams complete daily compared to corporations.

Small business pain points can vary, such as:

Orders consistently being shipped late and teams being stressed trying to keep up
Sourcing talent fit for the business isn’t easy
Posting across all social media channels is tedious
Managing a team and doing a various of jobs is difficult
Keeping up with accounts is getting complicated with time

Most of the above mentioned issues can be addressed with current technology and consulting.

And small businesses need workflow automation and experienced guidance.

Addressing Business Pains

After finding a pain, decide how to solve it for prospects.

So become a solution-provider by:

Using prospect’s language when talking about pain

This psychological technique builds trust with prospects.

And show them you take them seriously by using their language and terminology.

Who’s empowered to solve the pain

Find the buyer quickly by asking prospects who’s behind the purchase and involved in the buying decision.

Because there’s no point in spending hours with someone who can’t approve the deal.

Find key stakeholders early

If selling to multiple teams, you need to know early if one team has different priorities.

In case you have to go through a two-month legal review process before closing the deal.

Prospects think they’ll appear less authoritative if they aren’t the sole decision-maker, so ask about the following to avoid that:

Who else needs to be involved in the decision
Who else should know about the conversation

Frame your offer with prospect’s dilemma

Building trust with prospects and listening to their perspectives, will help you personalise solutions to their needs.

If your product has multiple purposes, tell them the features that will help their problems.

Make it easier for your pitch to appeal to everyone’s needs by listening and affirming prospect’s pain points while asking for information.

Sales is about empathy so close more deals and become helpful by asking the right prospects the right questions.