About 15 years ago I was asked to give a talk at the International Bar Association's annual meeting. It was held in San Francisco, CA.
There were approximately 3,000 lawyers from all over the world in attendance.
My topic was about discovering a client's pain points and it went something like this:
Whatever your business, your customer has pain points that they want to resolve and are hoping to get rid of.
I'm not really talking physical pain (although it can be physical) -- I mean pain points that led them to call you in the first place.
Examples:
-If you fix computers, the pain point might be that the computer crashed and all the important files were stored on the hard drive. PAIN POINT: Now they can't meet the upcoming deadlines because they lost their files.
-If you are in the medical profession, the pain may not just be physical but how the pain will impact the patient in the long term. Or perhaps the worry is what the injury will prevent the patient from doing. PAIN POINT: The patient won't be able to get an athletic scholarship because of the injury.
If you sell real estate, the pain can be losing your dream home before making an offer or taking a big loss on a property that you need to unload quickly. PAIN POINT: Seller was hoping to get more money from the sale to go towards having another baby.
Everyone is Dealing
With Some Type of Pain
Whatever your business... whatever your industry... whatever your profession... your customer will always have some pain points that they're looking for YOU to relieve.
It's more than the usual problem solving -- it's often an underlying pain that they might not tell you about. Sometimes they don't even know what it is themselves!
If you're able to hone in on this pain, isolate it and solve it, you will be viewed as a hero in your customer's eyes. But you really need to know your customer. You have to ask a lot of questions.
While it's not necessarily good that your customer is in pain, the pain will allow you to get to the root of the problem and solve in a holistic manner. And that's your job.
I'll leave you with this:
People Will Do More to Avoid Pain
Than to Gain Pleasure
We know this in marketing; we know this in psychology.
If you can craft your messaging in a way that will ease your customer's pain (both known and underlying), you will be many steps ahead of your competition.
Until next time.
