Many companies think their product is excellent. They are right. And they are wrong. They are right to produce an excellent product in terms of quality but can still be wrong in their potential customers’ eyes. Why? Because having an excellent product doesn’t guarantee you are going to make any sales. So, step out of your shoes and look at your product from your customers’ perspective.
You need to offer a solution to your customers’ problems and pains. The more prominent and more relevant solution you offer, the higher purchase intent you can reach. But first, to provide solutions, you have to know their pains.
How do you do that? With a simple exercise, yet very effective:
STEP 1: Make a list of all pains, challenges of your customer you can think of. A sheet of paper, it’ll do just fine. Some will come naturally, assuming you know your clients at least well (by the end of this exercise, you will know them better). If you struggle, here are several ways to investigate their pain points.
✅ Salesforce feedback: your people who regularly visit your customers should be able to share with you pains and objections they handle in their daily communication with clients
✅ Survey: send your clients an email with key questions. I guess you have good customer data. Don’t send them too many questions. You might not get completed questionnaires back just because you took their precious time. You could also think of some small treats in exchange (if allowed, of course)
✅ Interview: ask them to come for an interview. This option is more time-consuming; however, you can get answers that are of higher quality; you have a chance to go more in-depth. Don’t invite just those you like or have a good relationship with. You might miss some very crucial insights.
STEP 2: Once you have a clear picture of what bothers your customers, then think about how you can address each of them with your service or product. It could be that your product is already a perfect fit. In this case, you just need to pass the right message to your customers in an attractive way to tell them that you are here to help. If you listed pains that you do not see your product or service as an obvious solution to, reconsider! Is it possible you hold the knowledge and capacities to create something to become a perfect solution to these problems too? Here opportunities for you may lie. You would know best how much resources you can allocate to go for them but look long-term, and don’t seek just short-term solutions.
▶️ The potential for the growth of your business lies in becoming really special to your customers. And this decision is entirely in YOUR hands.
