How Customer Pain Points Can Strengthen B2B Sales

Even though you may have a high-quality product, your customer satisfaction rates will plummet and your churn rates will increase if your sales and marketing communications fail to address customer pain points. Only 37% of shoppers feel their preferred retailer understands them, despite the fact that 81% of businesses claim to have or be on the verge of having a full picture of their customers, according to an IBM report. How can salespeople demonstrate that they truly comprehend typical customer pain points? How can you make it possible for your revenue staff to identify these pain points when speaking with prospects and provide solutions?

In this blog post, we’ll talk about pain points and how to utilize them to boost revenue and value.

Customer Pain Points: What Are They?

Customer pain points are the specific issues that customers experience that aren’t being addressed by either the market as a whole or their existing solution. This could involve problems with cash flow, productivity, out-of-date procedures, or a lack of customer support. Examples include a customer disliking the expensive subscription plans or fees or having a difficult time getting a response from the business.

No matter what problem customers are having, as a business owner, you must offer them a clear solution. To be able to explain why (and how) you can solve a problem for your customers, you must first clearly grasp their challenges before offering a solution. To enhance the customer experience people identify with your business, employees must demonstrate empathy and understanding.

The top 10 businesses that scored highest on the Global Empathy Index survey boosted their value more than twice as much as the bottom 10 did and produced 50% more in profits over the course of the year. In other words, you’ll be more capable of providing your prospects with an exceptional user experience, which will result in better deals, more sales, and higher revenue, when you comprehend and empathize with their pain points.

Different Types of B2B Customer Pain Points

There are four key areas where your prospects frequently experience pain in various ways:

• Finances
• Productivity
• Processes
• Support

You have two ways to address the pain point, depending on why it exists: through your sales process or through your product.

Let’s examine many instances of each kind of customer pain point and how to address them.

Financial Pain Points

Financial Problems Customers of yours are overpaying for their present solution. Perhaps they have been paying for unexpected add-ons that weren’t part of the initial price. Perhaps they received a significant discount for the first few months or year, and now the cost of their subscription is likely to increase. Maybe they’ve recently experienced a crisis that has forced them to make cuts.

Financial difficulties are a delicate subject. Your customers could feel trapped with no obvious way out, particularly when a crisis strikes. Your treatment of prospects now will have an impact on how they perceive your company going forward.

Productivity Pain Points

Your prospects’ productivity is being hindered by the present tool stack. They dislike the tedious manual work they must perform day after day, as well as the time it takes. Make sure to demonstrate how your product makes their tasks easier in your sales messaging.

Perhaps your customers are going through an unproductive purchasing process. They are unable to reach a clear decision because they are stuck in their research. In this situation, customers require an efficient path to purchase that makes it simpler for them to move from studying to curiosity to purchasing.

Process Pain Points

Your potential customers may wish to modernize their companies’ internal operations. However, they are unable to readily modify their tech stack, and thus they are stuck using outdated procedures.

Businesses will have different reasons for this type of pain point, but here are a few examples:

• Because a sales team’s CRM is challenging to adjust and update, they are stuck using an antiquated and inefficient sales procedure
• Because the project management software a company uses doesn’t provide a clear picture of where each activity fits into the larger timeline, projects there frequently take longer than anticipated

Your product is the solution for the pain point in each of these scenarios.

Support Pain Points

Poor support for customers both during and after the transaction will cause them to leave quickly. For instance, the degree of support your business provides can differentiate you from your competitors if your prospects are having problems with their present provider. Meanwhile, your customers might be having trouble getting support while making a choice.

Are you assisting brand-new leads and prospects at every phase of the buying process? In what way do they investigate your product? Is there a simple way for them to get immediate answers? You’ll be better able to provide help to your customers if you can determine where and when they need it.

How to Discover the Pain Points of B2B Prospects

Salespeople are similar to doctors in that you must identify the source of the problem before prescribing a suitable treatment. Let’s talk about some particular actions you can take to find out more about the problems your consumers are having.

1. Conduct Market Research on Customers Without Relying on Sales Metrics

   Sales metrics and qualitative market research both have a lot to say about your prospects and customers. These data-driven methods can’t provide you with all the information, though.

   Sincere conversations with customers are necessary for conducting real customer research. More in-depth than what stats like consumption, conversion rates, or revenue can reveal is this qualitative research. Chat with your customers. To get them talking, ask the proper questions. Not only the pain points they are having in their business, but also the underlying reasons for those difficulties, should be noted.

   You can obtain accurate, up-to-date information from the people who matter by chatting with both your current customers and others in the sector.

2. Gain Knowledge from Your Customer Support Staff

   Every day, members of your support staff interact with customers. Also, it is their responsibility to resolve the problems your customers are having. This implies that they probably have some special knowledge of the problems that most influence your customers.

   Obtain information from your support staff. If you’re a sales manager, schedule regular meetings with the head of the support staff to discuss the most frequent tickets that are being submitted, the problems that customers in the market are experiencing, and potential solutions.

3. Invest Time Gathering and Putting into Practice Genuine Feedback from Customers

   Investigate the specific grievances or suggestions that customers have regarding your product or service rather than just seeking out general thoughts on pain points. This will not only help you see the problems that the business can answer more clearly, but it will also help you win the trust and loyalty of your customers. Real customer feedback can help you come up with ideas for product upgrades as well as changes to your sales procedure or marketing plan.

4. Monitor Social Media Conversations in Your Sector

   Social media is another excellent source of ideas. You can conduct focused searches for content that matches what you’re looking for on both Twitter and LinkedIn. You can track trending tweets on important business subjects on Twitter by using the Topics section. Browse through these trending tweets to learn about the problems your sector is reporting, as well as any suggestions or solutions that other users have provided in the comments that follow.

   Social media can be used to establish genuine interactions with members of your target demographic. Use LinkedIn’s advanced search tools, for instance, to connect with people who match the characteristics of your perfect customer. Ask if you can set up an interview with them rather than attempting to “sell” them. Ask the same questions you did while you were doing customer research to learn more about the problems facing the sector.

How to Boost Sales by Utilizing Pain Points

You need to improve the customer experience overall by addressing those customer pain points. Read on to find out how B2B sales and marketing teams can apply this knowledge to what they do on a regular basis.

Adapt Your Sales Strategy to Be More Customer-Centered

You’ll be in a better position to alleviate their problems from the outset of their interactions with you if your sales process is coordinated with the manner in which they prefer to make purchases. How, for instance, do potential customers prefer to learn about your product? Do they wish to test your offering for themselves? Would they rather communicate with your team online? Or do they long for the one-on-one conversation a phone call with your sales team would provide?

To meet your customers where they are during the buying process, be aware of their pain points.

Incorporate Actual Pain Points in Sales Conversations

Your sales staff can bring up these pain points in every sales contact if they have a deep, first-hand understanding of the market or industry they are selling to. Your sales pitch should point out a typical issue in a way that shows your prospect that you are aware of their perspective. Create a sales pitch that functions more like a conversation between peers than a monologue from an outsider by using the ordinary language of your target market and audience.

Tackle the Pain Points of Prospects Through Content Marketing

By providing your customers with useful information that helps alleviate their problems, you can demonstrate that you understand their needs. Before customers speak to a sales representative, problems can be resolved with the help of comprehensive manuals, FAQs, blog posts, and video content.

In the best-case scenario, this content will also encourage people to buy your goods, but don’t consider it to be your content’s main objective. Use content marketing to discuss current events in the sector and give the reader genuine value without seeking payment. You can demonstrate that you understand the demands of your audience by producing content that tackles a particular issue and provides a solution.

Constructing targeted customer testimonials is another effective method to use information in your favor. Recall the discussions you had with the customers earlier? Take notes during your customer interactions and ask them to describe the problem your product helped them with.

Conclusion

We wouldn’t have much information if our prospects didn’t experience any suffering. Most potential buyers make purchases to alleviate some kind of pain, whether it be a pain related to money, productivity, support, or processes.

It’s time for you to examine yourself. Do you regularly conduct in-person customer research as part of your business? How effectively do you comprehend the terminology used by your customers to explain their main problems? Do you actually demonstrate to your customers that you understand their struggles and are willing to help them?

A surefire strategy to enhance how they interact with your brand is to fully comprehend the pain points of your customers.

Here at FTx POS, there’s nothing more that we want than to see your business thrive; let us give you a hand at making that happen. To learn more about us, get in touch with one of our specialists today to schedule a consultation and demo.