A pain point for customers can be a point in your favor. Figuring out what problems your prospects face, developing a strategy around them, and selling your solution is a cure that benefits everyone (well, except your competitors). But how do you know what those pains are, exactly? Kind of like a doctor, you have to methodically test and accurately diagnose the problem before you can effectively treat it–that is, offer your solution.
What Are Customer Pain Points?
A customer pain point is a problem shared by companies and prospects in your target market. Pain points are valuable opportunities for vendors to understand and then resolve prospects’ problems by creating solutions for them. But why the word “pain”? Well, it’s all about timing.
There are “nice to have” and “need to have” purchase decisions. For example, a business that is thinking about a new look for their website is contemplating something that would be nice to have. They will get around to it, sooner or later.
In comparison, a company that has just experienced a devastating database failure is in pain. They need help, and fast. When you show up with exactly the answer they’re looking for, they’re more likely to be open to your pitch.
Not all customer pains are extremely urgent, but they can be distinguished from “wants” by how soon the customer is interested in resolving them. The greater the pain, the quicker the prospect will conclude the sales process.
What Are the 4 Types of Customer Pain Points?
There are four basic types of customer pain points:
Process
Another way of describing a process is “how things get done.” Every company develops methods and quality control activities to make sure that operations run smoothly. When a process is not optimized, companies may face pain points such as inconsistent quality and avoidable mistakes.
Productivity
We know from the basics of sales metrics that productivity is “how much you produce compared to the amount of resources you put in.” When a prospect is dealing with low productivity, they are investing too much time and/or resources in comparison to the output they’re receiving.
Support
Once a product has been sold by a vendor to the customer, the potential for pain is still not over. Especially with continuous revenue sales models, like those used for SaaS, resolving your existing customers’ pain points is essential. This can be tricky, because it requires understanding both the customer experience and what your teams are doing to improve it.
Financial
The “bottom line” is also a pain point. If there is a problem with process, productivity, or support, it will translate to a financial difficulty as well. Even so, there are purely financial customer pain points that are harmful to a company, for example, a billing process that is too complicated.
Finally, keep in mind that there is definitely some overlap between the types of pain points. For example, low productivity might result from a process issue but also be a financial pain point. But, from the point of view of a vendor, creating a solution around a specific need makes a value proposition easier to understand.
Customer Pain Point Examples
For every (useful) product, there is at least one pain point that it solves. Here are some pain point examples for each of the four types we discussed above (and of course, in our favorite topic–sales).
Process: This is the way sales teams generate leads. A pain point could be that the leads are low quality because many of them are old and the individual prospects no longer work at the target company.
Productivity: Despite a full staff working full-time, they just can’t make their targets. An explanation for this might be a lack of sales metrics to provide productivity insights.
Support: A classic support pain point is a badly designed customer journey, which could result from an incomplete onboarding program or an ineffective user interface.
Financial: An example of a financial pain point could be that SaaS sales teams take forever to receive bonuses because of a yearly subscription policy for customers.
When and How Do You Identify Pain Points?
It might sound strange, but you should start identifying customer pain points before you have customers. As part of your go-to-market strategy, looking at pain points is a vital part of building messages that create interest for a product.
It’s an ongoing process to understand the challenges that your prospects and clients face. How do you go about it? Methods range from surveys to casual conversations and can be divided into three categories.
External Data
It’s helpful to begin with B2B intent data when researching the kinds of barriers faced by your target market. For example, a simple Google Trends search might indicate growing interest in a certain topic that is related to your product. You could also look at second-party data such as product review sites – is there a common weak point in your competitors’ solutions? On that note, have your competitors recently expanded their product to address a certain pain point that you should pay attention to? Lastly, third-party data, like company profiles that can be purchased from companies such as Dun & Bradstreet, might not give you direct answers, but will provide a list of potential leads for surveys and interviews.
Surveys and Interviews
Surveys are a great way to form an initial idea of pain points based on direct evidence. A common tactic is to get people who have downloaded a case study, for instance, to fill out a short survey form as well. Don’t expect to get too much info, however, because busy people don’t always have the patience to complete even short surveys.
However, surveys will give you more of a direction for part two, which is an interview series. There are lots of prospect/customer types who can be targets for interviews:
- Existing customers
- People who show strong buying signals
- In-person connections such as people met at a trade show
Remember: focus on open-ended questions. It’s best to let the survey subject tell you as much as possible about the challenges they face. There’s a chance that, together, you and the prospect will discover pain points that they didn’t even know about (at which point you can encourage them to open their eyes to your solution).
Internal Data
Examining how both prospects and customers interact with your online presence and salespeople can provide valuable clues about new pain points. For example, if you see increased downloads of a certain white paper, it could indicate a trending interest in a specific solution that your customers may like to buy.
Key Takeaways
- A customer pain point is a problem shared by companies and/or prospects in your target market.
- The 4 types of customer pain points are process, productivity, support, and financial.
- Useful ways to identify customer pain points are through external data, internal data, surveys, and interviews.
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