5 Step Recipe to Uncover Customer Pain Points

If you are a newbie in the business who is just starting the company and you have some product or services or you are thinking to develop them to offer your customers but unable to discover customer pain points. You are the right person to read this article. 

I can completely get that chaos, pain, and struggle that newbie business owners go through when it comes to addressing customer pain points. You usually get this common question what pain points are you solving? You can get objections like your product is already in the market, how your product or service is going to make a difference, and why a customer should buy your services or product, what is so special about your product or service.

I have seen a lot of people, besides having a fantastic product or services they are unable to identify in-depth that their service or product can do a lot more than they can even imagine. It is so much deeper than we feel as we see a bigger picture unless we touch the emotion of the customer and match our product or service to their need, we will not be able to make a good sale or even have discovered the pain points. In my opinion, if this is happening, we don't even know the potential of our product or service that what change or transformation it can bring to customer's life.

So here I am listing five ways that can lead to uncovering customer pain points. Remember, these are not a traditional way of asking questions, doing marketing, survey, etc. that is the second step to check out the demand and validate the pain points in your niche market. These are the necessary steps and foundation to provide you with the clarity to know the value of your product/service and using that value to discover the pain points working with backward strategy. 

1. Define/Relate your product or service with a mission statement

Defining your product or service with your ultimate vision and mission statement is extremely important. This will not only reflect that you are a keen person to serve your customer; it will also relate that why are you doing this. You can create a sub-mission statement for your product or specific service that connect back to your vision, or your product/service should be able to relate to your actual mission statement. 

That also helps to position your product/services as a brand. To have clarity on your mission statement, you must be very well aware of your niche market so you know how you can position your product or service in your niche. That is behind the scenes work while you build up a business profile before launching your product or service because this is going to provide you the foundation and your "BIG WHY." 

This "BIG WHY" allows you to stay focus as I understand that while you are starting your business, the biggest challenge is to stay focussed as even though you define your specific niche, you still keep getting a lot of ideas. Yet, they may not necessarily be linked back to your ultimate vision and mission statement.

2. Strong Believe in your product/service

One of the most challenging periods while developing the product or service is to have strong believed. New entrepreneurs and business owners go through all these sorts of mind-boggling fears that what if the product or service doesn't work or their product or service is not good enough. That is very critical as if, as a founder of product or service, you don't believe in it, you cannot expect others to believe in your product or service. This self-doubt hits the most, especially when the product is in the production phase. 

Even I have seen people do have amazing products or services, they struggle with in their business and have not a firm belief in their product or services is one of the grassroots of this issue. If you don't believe in something, it can easily be reflected on your face, in your work, sometimes even in your product or service itself. It can affect your decision as well as actions. Trust your idea and believing in your product/services is the key to success.

3. What Benefits your services/products can provide your customers?

Once you have the clarity of your product or service along with a firm belief that it is the best product, then you need to deep dive that what benefits your product can provide to your customers. I always recommend believing in your product as the best product in the market, as that's the only way to open up your mind to see the benefits in much more depth. The deeper you see the benefits, the deeper you can connect with your product or service. 

That enables you to provide much clarity on what does your actual service or product do to the customer if they buy it and what makes it different from other products/services in the market if the product or service you are offering already exist in the market. 

4. What Ultimate Results are you looking for your customers to achieve?

Remember, the only way to connect with the customer is to understand your product, attach yourself to your product, and know the benefits. Once you are connected and know the benefits of your product/service a customer can have, you can then project a "New Day" for your customer in a much easier way. You can further dig down that what results customers can achieve. Now the results here I am talking about not the "benefits," I never consider the benefits as an ultimate result because benefits can fulfill the wants of customers, but "Ultimate Result" is what they need, if your product is wristwatch. 

Someone buys it as it looks cool, and they can watch the time; this is a benefit. Still, in a much more profound sense of how it is going to affect the customer's life, the answer is, he can be more disciplined, he will not miss out important things, accountable, he will be more mindful of his time and can be more productive. When he is more disciplined, he has a well-managed lifestyle, when he is not missing out on important things, he is making memories, when he is more productive, he will not have stress. 

That is a more profound version of benefit, which I call "Ultimate Results," if you can list down and identify the ultimate results, you will be surprised that how much value your product or service is adding to the customer. These "Ultimate Results" can eventually be used as a showcase for your marketing campaign. 

5. How does customer feel if they don't have that service or product?

This step is the game changer as it will let you discover the pain points of the customer. However, before getting into this step, ensure you have executed the whole of the above strategy. Else you won't have the choice to uncover and make a significant dive in the customer pain points to connect with customer's emotions. 

I may want to consider a similar example of a wristwatch to find out the customer's needs working backward. Have a look at the ultimate results that your product or service can help your customers to achieve and flip them. That means without these results, how their life is going to look like and what problems they can have. For instance, a wristwatch can help them to become disciplined, on time, and more productive. If there is no discipline, their life will look like chaos, if they are not on time, they will miss out on memorable moments, and if they are not productive, they become demotivated. So the customer pain points here can be "missing appointments, lack of discipline, poor lifestyle management, less productivity, frustration, stress, anxiety." 

Do you see how it unlocks the whole range of pain points when you dive in much more in-depth and connect with customer emotions? That's how it all works. It took ages for me to figure out that how to relate to customer pain points and trust me; this formula works very well.

If you believe you have an incredible product or service or idea to share with your customers, click on the link below to download my worksheet. That can assist you with discovering the pain points of your intended audience by working within the backward system.

Here is a tip to make the most out of it. I would suggest listing just one product or service in the "Product/Services" section. Then relate at least five benefits in the "Benefits/Transformation" part that can bring five ultimate results to your customers. 

You should be able to uncover at least two pain points against each final result. 

Good Luck!