If you're struggling to come up with a product people want to buy, try this super effective mindset switch...
If you're struggling to come up with a product people want to buy, try this super effective mindset switch...
Instead of focussing on finding a customer problem to solve, try and discover a customer pain to cure.
You'll be forced to go deeper, ask more insightful questions and really understand what drives your potential customer's business. #fyi
Can you elaborate on difference between pain and problem?
I think it's just another way of saying that customers can tell you what they want but not what they could have if they had some imagination.
An easy example is that if Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted they'd have said a faster horse. Their problem was that their horse was slow and had to rest. The pain was that they had somewhere to be and couldn't get there in time.
As more modern example, companies often do security audits of the companies that they rely on to run their business. FooCo wants to be sure Box.com has physical security on their datacenter so FooCo convinced Box.com to fill out a questionaire and prove they have that security in place.
No big deal except 1000 people want to know that Box.com has that security in place.
The problem that a CISO like the one at Box were solving was how to hire enough people to answer all the questionaires the customers were sending so they didn't lose business. The pain they had was that it was terribly expensive/slow to do this work that by and large other companies had already done.
In comes CyberGRX, a company that essentially said "we have a questionaire that speaks to everything anyone wants to know, fill it out once and we will send it to the 1000 people that want to know about your security.".
Thanks for the clear explanation. Like the examples and way it was explained.
Why is this much different from finding a problem? You need to really understand your customers problem as well.
I'm curios whats the difference between problem and pain for you?
Sure.
So a problem is a pain the customer is aware of and actively looking to fix (otherwise they wouldn't call it a problem).
There are lots of customer pains (some of which are pretty big) which the customer doesn't think of as a problem. They're just part of everyday life for the customer.
I don’t understand. A “problem” is both a “problem” and a “pain” but a “pain” is only a “pain?”
And if customers are not actively seeking to cure “pain” wouldn’t chasing “problems” make more sense?
Sincerely,
Confused
Ok maybe an example will help:
A founder I'm coaching wanted to build a product for the gym/fitness industry.
Asking a gym owner what his biggest business problems were elicited the following kind of feedback:
These are all problems. But the real pain is hidden underneath.
If you solve problems, you're limited to the customer's understanding and 'problem-solving' ability.
Instead, you should probe deeper. Focus on real 'pain'.
For example (in the gym situation above), it turns out the gym was losing >30% of customers/year.
Of those churning customers, the gym owner knew he could convince ~50% not to churn if he could catch their dissatisfaction early and offer them a free personal training session.
But the gym owner couldn't work out which customers were likely to churn.
And because this is 'normal' for gyms, he didn't view this massive pain (worth $300k+/year) as a problem at all - it's simply the cost of doing business!
But is the gym owner happy to pay through the nose to treat this pain? Yes, of course!
Thank you very much, the example was what I needed. So that sounds five-why-like. Get down into root causes.
Nice, thank you for clarifying. Makes sense now :)