Sales Tip: Understand the Prospect’s Pain Points

What Are Customer Pain Points?

A pain point is a specific problem that prospective customers of your business are experiencing. In other words, you can think of pain points as problems, plain and simple.

Like any problem, customer pain points are as diverse and varied as your prospective customers themselves. However, not all prospects will be aware of the pain point they’re experiencing, which can make marketing to these individuals difficult as you effectively have to help your prospects realize they have a problem and convince them that your product or service will help solve it.

Although you can think of pain points as simple problems, they’re often grouped into several broader categories. Here are the four main types of pain points:

• 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

Your prospects have a singular interest — solving whatever problems they may be experiencing. Going on about the magnificence of your product can only get you so far. How does your product benefit your prospect directly?

Use each interaction with a prospect to ask questions to identify their biggest pain points, such as:

• Could you help me understand your business process a little better?

• What are your everyday goals? Long-term goals?

• What are the biggest concerns and hurdles you face?

• What are your expectations for the solution?

• Do you have any budget constraints?

• If you solved a particular problem, how much better would things be for you? How so?

It’s important that you actively listen to the prospect’s answers. Too often salespeople are so engaged with pushing and selling that they forget that sometimes the best salespeople listen more than they speak. This way you can learn a lot about not only your prospect, but also your own product and how to better sell it.

Offer a solution focused on the buyer’s pain points. Sales pitches work best when you show prospects that you understand their obstacles and that your product has the capability to solve those problems for them.

Source: Badger & Wordstream