Pains, Gains and Jobs to Be Done

Customers, clients, and prospects rarely tell us what they actually want. When I led sales at Ctuit Software, time after time restaurant clients would tell us that they needed an inventory system. Or they needed better reporting.Or they needed better labor scheduling.

They would list features and solutions without considering the root cause of their pains.They would mistake pains for problems.

Mistaking the pain of their current inventory system for the true problem would overlook the fact that their true problem was that their food costs were too high.

An inventory solution, better reporting, or other fixes could help food costs, but without understanding the root cause of their pain, they risk spending money to implement a solution that didn't fix their food cost problem.

The solution to mistaking pain for problems when we were selling restaurant solutions was to listen carefully to what they wanted and then use that as a way to start asking about what they're trying to get done. Why what they're trying to do matters and what happens if they fail.

Getting past pain and into real problems is challenging, and very few people do it well. Here are two things you can do this week to advance a deal or improve your product.

1. Run three to five 20-minute customer calls and ask them about the biggest issue they're having right now in their role they don't have a good solution for.Get specific about what's painful about it, and then ask them, "What have you thought about to fix this?" Also ask them, "What have you tried?" You're their vendor. You are the subject matter expert on their solutions, and you probably have a good idea of what their problems are, potentially better than they do.Talk to them about it.
2. Critically analyze and rewrite your LinkedIn homepage and other headlines above the fold as a job, not a feature. Instead of saying "We deliver AI-powered analytics," try something like "Know which deals will close before you generate your sales forecast." List the job first, then talk about your product and how it does the job.

Prospects and customers aren't buying your software or platform or solution. They're hiring it to make a pain go away or to generate a gain, or both.

Talk to them about that, not features and benefits.