(last updated August 22, 2022)
True business pain requires an immediate solution. The kind of business pain we’re talking about here keeps everyone wide awake at night. It is THE thing that affects the real bottom line of an entire organization, and it requires a solution for basic growth and functionality.
There are often a series of pain points, depending on whom you’re speaking to within an organization.
So, asking the right questions of the right people at the right time is key to discovering their woes and helping a business with whatever it is that really hurts.
Major business pain points and examples of what they can cause:
Prospects who say they’re experiencing these issues are definitely on the buyer’s journey, and they need assistance right away.
The most common types of business pain points can be revealed by what your prospects say about their business. Listening carefully to their pain will help you know how or if you can help them.
People are a company’s greatest asset. Therefore, people problems like these affect the entire business:
If your product or service helps organizations manage, incentivize, or delight their teams, here’s the place to relieve a lot of suffering with your offering.
Businesses work hard to understand what’s holding their marketing and positioning efforts back. Prospects who have positioning pain might say:
Marketing is closely aligned with revenue, so providing solutions that fit their budget and their brand can really help solve positioning pain.
If there’s something keeping a company and its teams from working efficiently and effectively, they might say things like:
If your business can solve productivity issues for other businesses, these words are your cue to show them what you can do to help.
Operational problems that plague your prospects can be revealed when they say things like the following:
Repeatable processes = Repeatable success. Asking your prospect to imagine what a smoothly running company would feel like opens all kinds of doors here.
Critical financial pain points require serious solutions. If you hear prospects saying things like this, they’re hurting:
Helping a business reduce spending and manage its bottom line solves great suffering.
For: All prospects
The heart of the matter is growth.
Every company is in the business of it, and when it’s not happening, there’s serious pain.
If your prospect hasn’t thought about this, asking this question and listening carefully to what they say can help you understand the company’s needs and show them your willingness to assist.
Usually, a growth question can identify problems with revenue, client retention, employee dissatisfaction, production, or investment capital. These follow-up questions will open the conversation quickly:
Drill down their answers to any of these, and you'll learn a lot about your prospect's pain and what you can do to help them.
For: Individual contributors
You won't always be speaking to leadership, and asking questions of someone two or three levels below the C-suite executives can relieve the pain of the entire organization.
How does that work, exactly?
Pro Tip: This can be a good qualifying question. If they don’t know, they may be too junior to close a deal.
For: Individual contributors and managers
This approach to business pain focuses specifically on your point of contact.
Buyers care most about value, and this question can dig up answers that give you an opportunity to show your prospect the concrete value that your product or service can add for them personally.
Follow this main question with more specific questions like these:
.These questions will allow you to see exactly how you can add extra value to their organization with your offerings.
For: Senior managers and leadership
Real business pain can’t be solved overnight because these are BIG problems that threaten the sustainability of the company overall.
Therefore, it’s definitely something that’s on every quarterly planning agenda. It’s something that they talk often and think about constantly.
Asking this question will give you the business pain you're looking for to really help them turn it around.
For: All prospects
This question can be extremely telling.
Incessant complaints are rooted in deep, painful soil that may go unspoken.
If you ask about it specifically, you might unearth the truth of the matter.
An experienced salesperson can shed light on a larger issue that you might very well be in a position to solve for them.
For: Individual contributors and managers
This question is designed to illuminate positioning, process, people, and/or productivity pain in the sales department where pain can really hurt.
If you can make it clear that your product or service can help sales or marketing teams acquire more business, you win.
For: Individual contributors and managers
Losing customers is painful. Full stop.
The question is painful to ask, but it’s helpful in the long run because it can give you the insight you need about what challenges they’re really facing so that you can offer a solution.
Remember that inbound sales requires empathy. The more you ask, listen, and understand, the more you can really make a difference in an organization.
When your purpose is to offer solutions to your prospect’s pain, closing more deals is just a given.
We’re in the business of pain solutions for other businesses. Heck, we may as well change our name to Doctor Growth. Does your business need a check-up? We're happy to help. Make an appointment with our expert RevOps solutions team.