I recently spent some time on my messaging for several new projects that are coming my way. I have a big interview, a major publication article, and my small group workshop; Scale 2 Sell, all discussing what I do for my ideal customers. While talking with my coach, because a business owner needs a coach, we were discussing the 3 most important problems that my ideal customer is dealing with. What struck me the most was are my customers chasing something better or are they trying to avoid the pain if they don’t fix something? Understanding your customers is the most important research we need to do in order to have success.
Here's what I discovered and I encourage you to visit or revisit the solution you are providing and why it is important to your customers.
Pain
Many believe that people are willing to pay more and act faster to avoid pain. This makes sense if you have a water leak and the plumber hits you with their emergency charge. But when it comes to other non-emergency but urgent problems, are they willing to shop or take the first offer is made?
It matters how urgent and how big the pain really is, such as whether the problem is costing the company $1,000 more per month when unsolved or is it costing $100,000. Financial pain definitely has a breaking point.
Understanding your customer’s pain is a challenge because it may not be upfront or totally visible to you, you may need to do deep research or ask a lot more questions to uncover it. Some problems are common across their industry and others are specific to their stage of business. Uncovering your client’s problems can allow you to solve them if they are urgent enough or painful enough to solve them. If you have the time to woo and nurture your future customers, the nagging but not urgent problems may become your sweet spot and niche.
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Pleasure
Pleasure is a different mindset for the customers. It partners closely with their status. Something that makes them feel better about themselves, such as a new car, more money, or losing weight. It’s a completely different style of marketing and the opposite of the pain and their problems. It just means the focus of your marketing and business is on the pleasure or reward that they can have by using you.
You must have the same understanding of what your customers really want. Their future, their dream, and the motivation that drives them to do what they do. Maybe it is their family or their mission and you must know what they want and why they want it to be able to get them to buy your service and product.
The real concept of this blog is that to grow your business you must understand what is going on with your customers. It can be pain or pleasure that motivates them to hire you. Then present your company in the right view based on what the customer wants. So do the research, talk to your customers, get into their minds, and find out what they really want; to avoid the pain or to gain the pleasure.
By the way, we focus on the pleasure of helping your company increase your revenue now and build an asset worth selling whenever you decide it’s time to do something else.
Marcia Riner is a business growth strategist and the CEO of Trajectory Consulting. She helps professional service firm owners to optimize their business, drive growth, and to be in a great position to sell it someday. Together, she helps you create your roadmap to improve, scale, and maximize the value of your company.
Marcia hosts a weekly podcast with videos on YouTube @ www.Youtube.com/profitwithaplan and audio @ www.profitwithaplan.com. She also shares business growth tips on her YouTube Channel @Marcia Riner
She runs a masterclass where she teaches business owners how to optimize and scale their business so that they can sell it someday @ www.Scale2Sell.biz
Want more great ideas, download Marcia’s newest eBook “Think Outside The Box – 10 Reasons To Get Your Business Sale-Ready Now” available on www.TrajectoryBiz.com