Definition
A pain point is a specific, acute problem or challenge that a potential customer is experiencing. In sales and marketing, identifying a prospect’s pain point is the most critical step in the entire process. It is the « why » that motivates a customer to seek a solution. A successful sales pitch does not sell a product; it sells a solution to a well-understood pain point.
Examples
Pain points can be grouped into several categories:
- Financial Pain Points: « We are spending too much money on our current software’s maintenance costs » or « Our customer acquisition cost is too high. »
- Productivity Pain Points: « Our team is wasting 10 hours a week on manual data entry » or « This process is too slow and inefficient. »
- Process Pain Points: « Our sales and marketing teams use different systems that don’t talk to each other, so leads are getting lost. »
- Support Pain Points: « With our current provider, it takes 48 hours to get a response to a simple question, and it’s holding up our projects. »
Advantages/Benefits of Identifying Them
- Creates Urgency: Articulating a pain point makes the problem real and urgent, which motivates the prospect to act.
- Builds Trust: By focusing on the prospect’s problem (not your product), you demonstrate empathy and build credibility as a trusted advisor.
- Tailored Solution: Allows you to perfectly tailor your pitch to show exactly how your solution solves their specific problem.
- Effective Qualification: A prospect who has a clear and significant pain point is a much more qualified lead.
Related terms
- Discovery Call
- Value Proposition
- Solution Selling
- Objection Handling
- BANT (Need)
- Lead Qualification
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