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What is a Pain Point? Uncovering Buyer Pain Points

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June 23rd, 2023

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What is a pain point, how does it influence buyers during the sales journey, and how can you use a specific pain point to increase sales? 

While highlighting the benefits of your products or services to potential customers is crucial to driving revenue and conversions, it’s also essential to demonstrate how your offering will alleviate the issues your prospects already face. Customers are more likely to be motivated to make a purchase if they believe doing so will help them to overcome a problem. 

Learning how to uncover pain points, and highlight them effectively in sales conversations, will strengthen your chances of making consistent sales, and building customer relationships. 

What is a Pain Point? An Introduction

So, what is a pain point exactly?

In simple terms, a pain point is a persistent problem a customer wants to overcome. In other words, they’re an unmet need your prospect wants you to satisfy. 

Customer pain points can be related to a person’s personal or professional lives, and they can come in a variety of different forms. Determining the prospective pain points of your customers is how you ensure you present the product or service you have to offer as the right solution. 

Some common types of pain points include:

  • Productivity pain points: Common in the B2B world, productivity pain points refer to issues that cause inefficiencies in the business. For instance, a professional might be constantly wasting time with software or hardware that’s too difficult or complex to use. 
  • Financial pain points: Financial pain points revolve around money. A customer might be spending a lot of money on something similar to the solution you’re offering, but they might not be seeing a significant return on their investment. 
  • Process pain points: Process pain points are connected with systems or processes that cause frustration and bottlenecks in people’s lives. For example, a B2B customer might be losing time and money without access to automation tools to help streamline workflows.
  • Support pain points: Otherwise known as “people” pain points, support pain points are related to a lack of support or guidance. Customers who struggle to get the support they need from the businesses they choose to work with often feel unable to take full advantage of the solutions or services they’re accessing.

How to Uncover Pain Points: The Simple Guide

Learning how to uncover pain points is one of the most important steps any salesperson can take to make their sales process more effective. If a sales team and marketing team understand the biggest challenges their customers face, they can more effectively convince prospects to purchase something. 

There are various ways to uncover pain points, but some of the most common options include:

  1. Conduct Qualitative Research

Understanding the specific customer pain points your leads face requires a significant amount of research, both quantitative, and qualitative. Qualitative research focuses on generating in-depth, detailed insights into customers. The easiest way to collect this information is by asking your customers open-ended questions that allow them to expand on their issues. 

For instance, at the beginning of a customer journey, during a discovery call, you can ask customers questions such as:

  • What would you say your biggest issue is regarding [x]?
  • What kind of goals are you struggling to achieve with [x]?
  • What do you feel you need the most help with right now?

Avoid any questions that encourage a simple yes/no answer, as this will give you a narrow view of your customer’s problems. Take the time to build rapport, and speak to your customers.

  1. Invest in Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is another extremely valuable tool for uncovering customer pain points. “Quantitative” is the term used to refer to data in the form of statistics, and numbers. Diving into the information collected by your sales and marketing team can give you some excellent quantitative data. 

For instance, you could ask your marketing team which social media posts, blogs, and other marketing materials generate the most attention for your business. You can also speak to your sales team, asking them what kind of challenges and questions arise most often during the customer journey.

There are even tools which allow you to combine marketing and sales data, providing a more comprehensive overview of the trends and patterns that emerge throughout the customer journey. Using the data you gather; you’ll be able to create more compelling sales and marketing campaigns. 

  1. Analyze Customer Feedback

Alongside speaking directly to your customers, and collecting insights from your sales and marketing campaigns, it’s also worth looking for indirect insights into customer challenges. In today’s digital world, consumers are constantly airing their concerns and issues online. Social media channels, review platforms, and forums are packed with useful information. 

Using social listening tools, brand monitoring software, and other solutions, businesses can build out on the first-party data they’ve already collected. You can even use the information you glean from customer feedback to determine how your company is outstripping the competition. Or, you can look for issues you may need to fix to increase sales. 

Using Customer Pain Points in the Sales Cycle

Once you know how to uncover customer pain points, the next step is implementing this information into your sales and marketing strategy. Leveraging pain points in your conversations is how you position yourself as a “solution provider” and trusted resource to prospects, rather than just another sales person. When addressing pain points:

  • Use your customer’s language: Avoid converting pain points into jargon your customers might not understand. Show your customer you understand them by echoing their language, and showing empathy during conversations. 
  • Dive into details: Learn as much as you can about the nature of the issue, and who you need to talk to, in order to resolve the problem. Identify any key stakeholders for the prospect you’re talking to, and bring them into the conversation. 
  • Frame your offer as a solution: Once you fully understand the issue your customer is facing, position your product or service as the solution. Highlight the exact benefits you’re offering, and how they’ll address the problem for your lead. 

Addressing Your Customer’s Pain Points

Being an effective sales person in today’s competitive world requires more than just access to a fantastic product or service. Salespeople need to demonstrate incredible empathy, showing their customers they understand their needs, and how to resolve them. To close more deals, and build trust with your target audience, you need to address the pain points your leads face. 

Ask the right questions, get to know your customers, and build rapport as often as you can. The more time you take to understand your customer’s challenges, and show you’re willing to address them, the more successful you’ll become. 

Learn all about customer pain points, how to uncover them, and how to use them in the sales cycle with help from the experts. Join Hard Skill Exchange today! 

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